The Trial of Darth Vader
by Librarianbot
Summary: Following the battle of Endor, a lone prisoner waits for what fate will bring him, his very existence kept a closely guarded secret. Desperately trying to work out what to do with him, the Rebel leaders send a lone analyst to take a record of his side of the story. AU, following on from an alternate ending for Return of the Jedi.
1. Chapter 1

"Even the droids don't like coming down here."

It was hard to tell if this was meant as a warning, a joke or an attempt at conversation. The guard mumbled her words, speaking more to herself than to anyone else. She sounded embarrassed to be breaking the silence that pervaded the corridor and, as far as Harvan could tell, the rest of the ship as well.

He made a non-committal noise and they walked on, their footsteps resounding through the empty hallway. Harvan cast a surreptitious sideways glance at his companion, noting the woman's sunken eyes and sallow complexion. Clearly not someone who had been getting much sleep recently and, really, who could blame her? Possibly herself: her uniform marked her out as a combat veteran and the scars criss-crossing her cheek and the hard lines of her face suggested she had been on the front line. Not the kind of soldier who liked showing fear over something as trivial as guard duty.

Harvan doubted there was a soul in known space who would have thought less of her for it, given the circumstances.

They reached a junction, the corridor branching either side of a single door. The guard stopped and visibly braced herself. "We're under orders not to go any further," she said apologetically, "We'll monitor you but you're gonna be on your own."

"I know, sergeant. General Madine explained when he briefed me."

"Right." She looked at Harvan for a moment, weighing him up. "They said you volunteered for this. That true?"

"Yes."

Her face twisted. " _Why_?"

Harvan shrugged. "Someone needed to."

Either this was the answer the guard was looking for or the proof she needed to declare Harvan completely insane. Whichever was the case, she lifted the control disc from her belt and triggered the door release. It opened with a smooth, strangely understated hiss.

Feeling the guard's eyes boring into his back, Harvan straightened his jacket and stepped inside. The door immediately slammed shut again, leaving him standing in an overly-lit antechamber. After a few seconds, the inner door unlocked and slid aside. After a few more seconds, Harvan summoned the courage to go through.

The room was dark and almost completely empty. Though hardly a cell, it was entirely devoid of the normal comforts of a living space. There was no trace of decoration and the furniture was minimal and functional. Equally however, the surveillance equipment was artfully concealed from view. Without the overbearing security of a normal prison compartment, the sparseness seemed less oppressive: instead, it created the illusion of neutral ground.

Red lights flickered in the gloom, fluttering patterns that did not quite keep time with the heavy rasping echoing around the room. Harvan focused on them as his eyes adjusted, slowly picking out the details around them. The chamber's single occupant sat rigid in the middle of the floor, absurdly huge in the one small chair. The cloak was gone and that should have made the figure seem less imposing, less enormous. Instead, it just stripped the niceties of civilisation and laid bare the armour's stark power, the size and strength that remained even in repose. There was damage, true. The chest plate was streaked and scoured with burn marks and there were gashes in the support suit, a few of which had gone deep enough to require patching. The right hand was unadorned robotics, with no glove or synthiskin to cover it, a crude temporary replacement in place only to ease the pain the damage had caused. Yet all that paled into insignificance because the helmet, the mask, that perpetual death's head stare remained, unaltered, its power undimmed.

Slowly, the head rose and Harvan's mouth went dry. Darth Vader was looking straight at him and electric terror swept through him, all his preparation and premeditation evaporating. He was alone and helpless, pinned in the path of a nightmare. A word, a gesture and he would be snuffed out. That was the promise of that mask. The marching of Stormtrooper boots, the scream of TIE fighters, the pure horror of a dark lord's powers.

He braced himself against the wave of cold dread that would follow that first glance, the suffocating blanket of hate and contempt that was as much Vader's signature as a lightsaber slashed corpse or a crushed throat. Harvan had known seasoned warriors reduced to quivering wrecks by it and warring governments who it had frightened into peace. No one is safe, it whispered, no one escapes. All will fall and all will be lost.

But it did not come. There was only the mask and the memory of fear and the heavy, rattling breath.

Silence. Vader did not speak or react or make any move to acknowledge the visitor. And it gradually dawned on Harvan that this was a man – and it _was_ a man because most monsters were – this was a man who had never had to ask why someone came into his presence. They were there because he bid it. Or they justified themselves without being asked. Quickly.

Harvan cleared his throat, wishing it felt less raw, wishing that his skin felt less clammy. "My name is Harvan Sahtou," he began, because no greeting would have been appropriate, "I am here to take your statement."

For one, very long moment, Vader continued to say nothing. Then, in a voice like an empty grave, he repeated, "Statement?"

It was barely a question. There was no interest or curiosity in the word, not even a real sign of a lack of understanding. That would have been weakness and the dark lord tolerated no weakness in action or speech.

"Y-yes. The council would like a statement of your actions in the service of the Empire. In your own words. From the beginning to the Emperor's death. As much detail as you can remember." Vader's silence was a black hole, sucking the explanations from him without effort. "If possible, they would like to know the context for the actions you undertook and the way you went about performing your duties. I . . . I am here to transcribe the statement and . . . prompt you if necessary. They . . . would like you to know that this is considered a key part of the . . . discussions concerning your . . . ah . . . future. Here. In this fleet, with the Alliance I mean. It would – be extremely helpful to us . . ."

He trailed off. Still, Vader stared at him. All at once, he was struck by how the mask so absolutely concealed the face. For all he knew, Vader had his eyes closed or was looking at him quizzically. That the shell was locked into a permanent glower did not actually mean the man inside was.

"Why?"

The word vibrated though Harvan. He felt it tremble up from his boots to the nape of his neck. "We . . . they have no account of your actions from your . . . perspective. They need to know why you did . . . everything. It would be helpful if they did."

"To judge my guilt."

Vader stirred, minutely in his chair. A foot, slightly forward. Shoulders dropping a fraction. Was it resignation? Acceptance? Contempt? Impossible to tell.

"You are not on trial," Harvan said carefully, "I am not here to prosecute or defend you. I . . . am a recorder. We would like to give you the chance to . . . t-to explain. To put your . . . side on record. You are under no compulsion to do this but we would ask you to at least consider it in the interests of . . ." Once more, he trailed off, tripped up by the absurdity of what he was saying. How could they have compelled Vader if they had wanted? The Alliance asking the dark lord to tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? It sounded ridiculous. It _was_ ridiculous.

But it had to be done. Someone had to ask.

Again, the empty stare bored into him. Again, he tried to imagine the expression behind the mask.

"Very well."

The agreement came so abruptly, Harvan nearly sagged with relief, catching himself just in time. "Th-thank you." He looked around, partly to find another chair, mostly to give him something to do that was not acting like a floppit caught in headlights. Vader remained as he was, still and impassive.

Unfolding a chair from storage by the wall and dragging it over to face Vader's, Harvan took out his holo recorder and placed it on the floor between them. His hands shook slightly as he pulled out his datapad as well, the stylus clattering against the casing. The sound of Vader's respirator ate into his skull. It was hard to concentrate on anything else. He tried three times to find the right point on the first page of his notes, all the while painfully aware who he was keeping waiting.

"Well . . ." Harvan forced himself to look up again. "We should start at the beginning."

"And what would you consider the beginning to be, Mister Sahtou?" There was the faintest trace of _something_ in the synthesised voice, some emotion ringing in that hollow grave at last.

Harvan's mouth worked soundlessly, his mind seizing up for an instant. Reflexively, he glanced down at his datapad. "Well," he repeated, giving himself the time he needed to focus on the notes, "The circumstances of your joining the Empire. Joining with Emperor Palpatine, rather. How . . . and why you . . . sided with him."

Vader's head tilted slightly. "It was necessary."

"Err . . . pardon?"

"The Empire. It was necessary. The Republic, the Jedi, they were weak. The Empire brought strength and order. Becoming the Emperor's student gave me the power to enforce that order."

"And your first mission in his service?" Harvan asked when it was clear Vader would not elaborate unprompted. "We have little information on the period immediately prior to Palpitane's ascension but we do know you were involved in the . . . Jedi . . . purge . . ."

"Yes. I led the attack on the Jedi Temple. You wish to know the details?"

Harvan did not trust himself to answer. He was afraid he would be honest. So he just nodded.

Vader studied him impassively and then began to speak.

* * *

 _Notes_

 _* For those interested, this is set roughly a month after the Battle of Endor._  
 _* Strictly speaking this is all non-canonical but for the sake of my own sanity, I'm not going to commit to either the new Star Wars canon or the old EU: merely use bits of all of it and hope I end up with a coherent whole._  
 _* This was partly inspired by the Star Wars: Infinities version of RotJ, which ended with a redeemed Vader in a set of shiny white armour. I would posit that a) it would not be that easy and b) shiny white armour has bad implications in the Star Wars universe anyway._  
 _* I have a 29 chapters of this written so will try and update daily._  
 _* Any resemblance to actual jurisprudence is entirely coincidental._  
 _* And finally a huge apology to everyone else who has ever used the phrase 'The Trial of Darth Vader' as the title or subtitle for their work: it is too obvious and delicious a headline to pass up and mine is but humble theft of the concept._  
 _* Obviously I don't own Star Wars in the slightest._


	2. Chapter 2

Hours later, Harvan stumbled from the room, a litany of death and destruction ringing in his ears.

The sacking of the Jedi Temple, the slaughter of Palpatine's rivals on Mustafar, the injuries and bodily reconstruction, binding him ever closer to the Emperor, hunting the remaining Jedi knights, the formation of the Imperial Inquisitors . . . Vader's memories were clinically precise and frighteningly complete. He listed Jedi after Jedi, apprentices, knights, masters, men, women, children – those he had killed, those he had caused to be killed, those who had fought, those who had begged, those who had barely known what was happening – easily two hundred names, reeled off effortlessly and dispassionately.

They were exactly the kind of details Madine and Mon Mothma had asked Harvan to collect and listening to them turned his stomach over. He clutched at the wall for support, not really seeing the sergeant until she stepped close and gripped his shoulder.

She did not say anything, but waited while he closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Th-that's it for today," he stuttered, slowly getting a hold on himself.

"Just for today?"

"We'll . . . resume tomorrow."

Which no doubt reinforced that he was a hopeless lunatic but she continued to refrain from commenting, instead asking if he felt up to taking the walk back to the docking bay since they were not supposed to linger near the cell for too long.

He managed it on pure professional stubbornness.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day brought another slow cascade of horrors. Harvan sat and listened to a list of worlds pounded into submission or brought to heel through acts of terror. The remorseless march of the Empire as seen through the eyes of the one leading the advance.

Still, the details for such campaigns were not as complete as for those that had concerned the Jedi. There were fewer names, more generalities. Vader spoke of planetary populations and minor uprisings rather than individual battles, of generals and governors rather than of every soldier he fought. Perhaps that was understandable. Perhaps as time went on, as the scale of his duties expanded, it simply became impossible to retain the details of specific individuals.

Or perhaps, Harvan thought to himself as he watched through his recordings, safe in a cabin far away from the bare cell and dark lord's rasping breath, it was simply that the people Vader was fighting were no longer Jedi and thus did not warrant the same meticulous remembrance. Normal soldiers, planetary militia, people on the street – these were less important than the great masters of the Force.

Harvan shivered at the knowledge of which category he himself fell into.

No. He shook himself, forcing himself to focus on the names that Vader actually recalled. Save the fear for the cell and for his nightmares. For now there was the tedious process of cross-referencing against the Alliance's records. That, at least, was territory of which he was the master.


	4. Chapter 4

At the end of the third day, General Madine summoned him to his cabin aboard _Home-One_.

Without a word, he handed Harvan a tumbler of Corellian whiskey and pointed him to the seat opposite his desk. Sitting down himself, the General picked up a glass of his own, lifted it in salute, then knocked back half the measure. Harvan followed suit, savouring the burning in his throat as an antidote to the dull numbness that had filled his head since leaving the prison ship.

Madine drummed his fingers against the data-discs stacked in front of him. "Why the kriffing hell did you volunteer for this?" he asked, shaking his head.

Harvan opened his mouth to repeat what he had told the sergeant about someone needing to. And shut it again. "I'm starting to ask myself the same thing, sir," he admitted eventually.

"I wanted to veto this from the start. The intel we need. Historical details are not a priority. And exposing more people than necessary to him cannot be a good idea."

"I . . . perhaps not." Harvan stared into his glass.

Madine frowned at him. "Obviously you do not agree."

He put the drink down and pressed his fingertips together. "I think Mon Mothma's right, sir. However we deal with him, it will set a precedent. We have to do it right."

"And colour all our future dealings with captive Imperials, and show the galaxy whether we really are going to be better than the Empire or not." The General scratched his beard. "I know. She's right. But rushing is not going to help either. This information you're collating – it's unpleasant in the extreme, but what is it really? A formal admission of guilt? One man's memories of being the Emperor's right hand? I'm still not sure how we are supposed to trust a word he says. This could all be a sham of helpfulness while he regains his strength."

"With respect sir, that is surely the point." Harvan spread his hands. "If it is a sham, we need to test how far he's willing to go with it. If it isn't and we are put in the position of needing to judge him in a court, we need to be sure of what we're accusing him of. This is the only logical first step. Comparing what he tells us to the facts we have access to."

"All of which I am well aware of. That does not mean I like exposing people to him. Or reading the results." Madine leaned back and studied Harvan through narrowed eyes. "Then there's the matter of Commander Skywalker's claims."

"Yes, sir?"

"You have not directly mentioned them to Vader. Why not?"

Harvan did not reply for a moment. He folded his hands in his lap. "For all that he has hunted us across the galaxy, we know virtually nothing about the man who calls himself Darth Vader. It would even be perfectly reasonable to assume that many people have worn that armour. If he asserts that he is Anakin Skywalker, former Jedi knight, then that must be given consideration. I think it will be instructive to see how much effort he puts into selling the idea."

"Which is presumably why you started by asking him about the early days of the Empire, not the last days of the Clone Wars."

"I started there because that is when the earliest mentions of 'Darth Vader' date from. He was always rumoured to have taken part in the purging of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Having listened to him describe it, I would be prepared to suggest that that is true."

"And now he owes his life to the first Jedi Knight in a generation." Madine drained his glass and set it down with a a firm clink. "That, I think, is what they call irony."


	5. Chapter 5

"The House of Kelom attempted to impede Imperial efforts to subdue the Tremanix System. Had they succeeded, they would have disrupted supply lines through several key sectors and served as an inspiration to other dissidents. It was decided that instead they would serve as an example to those who would defy the Empire."

Vader broke off, flexing the replacement hand as if trying to work out a cramp.

"Decided by who?" Harvan asked before his courage could desert him.

The black, blank stare rose to pin him to his seat. A rush of ice filled his veins, the sheer horror of having interrupted _Darth Vader_. But it was Vader who turned away, or at least shifted his gaze sideways for a moment. "The Emperor. He had yet to cede regional control to the governors. Every rebellion demanded his personal attention. Demanded my personal attention."

"He ordered you to . . . make an example of the House?"

"My master commanded it."

Harvan mentally braced himself. "What did you do to them?"

"The species is long-lived and reproduces slowly. They prize their young and each House depends upon their children for continuity and social standing. The children of Kelom were publicly executed, destroying the House's future and condemning its elders to humiliation and misery. The Tremanix System has remained under Imperial control ever since."

"Your master commanded that?" The question rasped in Harvan's throat, scarcely louder than the insistent hiss of Vader's respirator.

"My master commanded the House of Kelom be punished." His darkened reflection stared back out of Vader's eyes, the light drowned in blackness. "I decided what that punishment would be. And I carried it out."


	6. Chapter 6

Harvan stumbled as he got off the shuttle, a wave of exhaustion breaking between his temples. He ground at the grit in his eyes, hoping against hope the motion would dispel the images of dead children that still haunted him. Cross-checking the details of the destruction of the House of Kelom had taken all night and left him exhausted from the horror of it. Not just the visual records of what Vader had done, though that was bad enough, but the upheaval and decay that had followed, the total capitulation to the Empire and the Empire's total exploitation of the system.

He wondered, as he straightened and got a grip on himself, why it was affecting him so much. This was hardly the first set of Imperial atrocities he had catalogued and it was unlikely to be the last. Perhaps that _was_ the problem. That he was still scratching at the surface and that there was so much more to come. More torture. More dead children. A galaxy's worth of misery.

And he would have to sit opposite the one responsible for inflicting it, day after day, listening, unable to set a single moment of it right.

Sighing, he worked some of the stiffness out of his neck and reached up to the hatch control.

"Hold that shuttle!" someone shouted from the other side of the docking bay.

Harvan blinked and looked across to see a dapper man in a fleet uniform waving at him. He wore a cape thrown carelessly over one shoulder and a general's insignia on the other. Flashing a dazzling smile as Harvan lowered his hand, he turned his attention back to the sergeant, who was striding along at his side. "Seriously," he said, "I think you could make a killing if you sold tickets. 'Come see the mighty Darth Vader, caged at last!' You'd have queues out the airlock for that show."

The sergeant shrugged but did not deny it. "Maybe you can suggest it to General Madine, sir."

"Heh." The general grinned again. "I might just do that."

They reached Harvan and, somewhat belatedly, he came to attention. The general threw him a casual salute then slapped the sergeant's back. "Thanks again for giving me the tour, Disris."

"My pleasure, sir," she said flatly.

With a wave and a final swirl of his cape, the general disappeared into the airlock.

Harvan shut the hatch and frowned. "What was General Calrissian doing here?"

Disris shrugged again. "Gloating mainly. Spent half an hour watching the screens in the control room. Must have wanted to make sure there was no chance of the prisoner getting loose."

He nodded slowly. "That makes sense."

"I guess." She snorted. "Come on."

Reluctantly, Harvan followed her down the now-familiar corridor towards the cell, trying hard not to envy General Calrissian his place on the shuttle back to the flagship too badly.


	7. Chapter 7

Later, safely back in his cabin, Harvan found himself thinking how uniquely placed Lando Calrissian was among the victims of Darth Vader's wrath. Here was a man who, in spite of everything, had been more inconvenienced than truly injured. He had lost much, years worth of work poured into the Bespin cloud city, yet that loss had not destroyed his life. He was an adventurer, a born gambler who accepted the losing hands as gracefully as the winning. And now he was a general, a war hero and could bend the ear of the people aiming to shape the next few decades of galactic history.

This was a man who could afford to gloat.

There were few in the fleet who could claim that. Fewer still who would have acted on the impulse. Despite the general's enthusiasm for the idea, Harvan doubted anyone really wanted to acknowledge Vader's presence, much less watch him on a screen.

Looking down at the datapads spread out around him, Harvan could not blame any of them in the slightest.


	8. Chapter 8

"But are you absolutely sure that nothing could be done? If we could secure better facilities, wouldn't that make a difference?"

The measured, gently insistent voice carried around the curve of the corridor, answered with the kind of burbling sigh Harvan knew well from long hours spent working on the Mon Calamari star cruisers. "We have been over this, Commander."

Harvan glanced questioningly at Disris. She shrugged, not offering any actual explanation.

They rounded the corner to find a young man dressed in sombre black talking earnestly to one of the Alliance's senior medics. From the heavy-lidded expression she wore, it was either a discussion she did not want to have or one that she had had too often.

"But if you need me to reiterate my diagnosis," she went on, folding her long fin-fingers together, "I will go through it again." Her great eyes blinked once. "The cybernetics pervade every part of his body. They are integral to his continued survival. Removing them entirely would be next to impossible. Attempting to reconfigure the interfaces would be traumatic to the point of being fatal. Even if it were not, I am not sure any amount of technology or bacta treatment would be capable of restoring what is left of his body to any semblance of health. Quite simply, he has been in that armour too long. I am sincerely sorry that this is causing you distress, Commander Skywalker. If whoever put him in there had had any interest in actually healing him perhaps we would be having a different conversation. As it is, there is simply nothing that can be done."

Even from a distance, the way Skywalker's shoulders dropped was obvious. The sorrow of a last hope flickering out flashed across his face. But almost at once, it was gone. The young man took a deep breath. "Thank you for your time, Doctor Teera," he said, tone level and polite.

The Mon Cal harrumphed, head bobbing once. "If you will excuse me, Commander, my services are needed elsewhere."

"Of course."

Straightening her tunic, the doctor stamped up the corridor, brushing past Harven and Disris with a curt nod of acknowledgement. Their glances followed her departure then went back to Commander Skywalker, who lingered by the cell door, chewing his knuckle. His eyes were unfocused and distant.

Then, abruptly, he noticed their presence. "Ah, sergeant." The pensiveness vanished into a thin smile. "My apologies, I'm blocking the road, aren't I?"

"No more than two people allowed down here at a time," Disris confirmed gruffly, "This gentleman needs access."

"Does he?" Skywalker looked at Harven, open and curious. "Of course. You're with General Madine's staff, aren't you?"

"Yes sir."

"Well, ah, carry on." Skywalker gave another slight smile and strode away, suddenly purposeful.

"So that was our famous Jedi knight," Harvan mused once he was safely out of sight.

"First time you've met him?"

"First time I've said two words to him."

"Most people say he's not what they expected."

Harvan frowned. "What is there to expect? As far as I know, the only points of comparison for what Jedi are supposed to be like are Commander Skywalker and, well . . ." He looked pointedly at the door.

Disris grimaced. "I still can't believe he's claiming to be related to . . . _him_." She shook her head in frank disbelief. "Why would anyone do that?"

Harvan honestly had no answer for her.


	9. Chapter 9

Harvan was starting to appreciate the patterns in Vader's laboured breathing, the catches and hitches that denoted the shifts in his emotions – such as they were. There were pauses around certain names, a subtle elongating of rhythm when certain subjects came up, the occasional rattling stop from deep within his respirator. Vader's voice never wavered and Harvan certainly did not press his lines of questioning based on then changes he detected. But he made a note of them. Used them to map the man he was listening to.

They spent several days running through Vader's actions in the Outer Rim, during what was now – hopefully forever – the Empire's middle period. More lists of crushed revolts, livened by the occasional fugitive Jedi or nascent Force user. Harvan actually summarised it in those exact words in his notes and immediately regretted his flippancy. Still, the obvious bias in Vader's recounting of events remained. To him, it seemed, the Jedi mattered in a way that countless determined rebels never could.

From Chirrion to Lothal, across hundreds of inhabited worlds and thousands of systems, Vader strode at the forefront of every attempt to bring the so-called lawless regions under Imperial control. He recounted his efforts with none of the pretensions of the governors and high-ranked officials whose ends he had served. There was no talk of 'civilising' the galaxy or of bringing order. It was simply what his master had willed: an endless sequence of directed intimidation and terror. The Emperor's Fist, striking wherever and whenever it was needed. Fear incarnate.

Yet there were gaps in the pattern.

"Why were you never deployed to Torshil Station? Or Tatooine?" Harvan frowned as he reminded himself of the details, welcoming the excuse to fix his eyes on his pad rather than Vader's mask. "On at least three separate occasions that we know of, the Empire had reason to strike against the crime syndicates headquartered there. Why were they exempt from the full Tarkin Doctrine treatment?"

There was a moment – just a second or so – in which it seemed that Vader's breathing had actually stopped dead.

Startled, Harvan looked up.

"The Black Sun were useful to the Emperor," Vader said slowly, respirator kicking in again, "Antagonising them by impeding their operations in Torshil would have been counter-productive. And Jabba the Hutt's activities were beneath the Emperor's notice. Beyond that, Tatooine . . . held no interest."

Harvan heard the hesitation, the click and hiss of the respirator slowing, the drawn-out breath wheezing through the mask. He could not argue with Vader's assessment. Could not fault his reasoning. The answer was reasonable. It made sense. And it was a lie. A hasty lie told on the back of a stirring of emotion strong enough to break through all that fierce black armour.

He made a note to call up the history of Tatooine when he got back to the flagship, with special reference to anything that had ever happened there to disturb a dark lord.


	10. Chapter 10

" _Matajim Tellud was a Jedi Initiate at the time of the purge. Her nascent abilities served her well as a bounty hunter operating in the Mid Rim. Eventually she chose to assist a group of rebels in attacking an Imperial internment camp. Her skills were . . . surprisingly developed –"_

" _Guardsman Temeote obeyed without hesitation but not without intelligence. He protected the Emperor with his life –"_

" _Jemal Fent was a child taken from a Jedi Temple on Karnat. He was trained and inducted as an Inquisitor, a role he performed well. His betrayal was unexpected. It was necessary that I dealt with it personally –"_

" _Governor Tarkin's methods were effective. His loyalty was absolute. He was trusted where few were and he repaid the Emperor well for that faith. He maintained order and did not hesitate to act against rebellion. I was . . . content to serve at his side."_

" _Governor Rell was a fool who could not be trusted to obey without twisting her instructions to her own advantage –"_

" _A dark Jedi, strong in the Force. I did not learn their name and there was no match for their species in the databases. We fought for days before I was able to overcome –"_

Keying pause on the cycling recordings, Harvan leant forward and peered at the freeze frame. Even as a quarter-scale hologram, poorly resolved in the projection lines, Vader's armour sent a chill up his spine. It was still so hard to look past it. Past the way it concealed the man's expression and tone, replacing them with custom-made intimidation . . .

An easy excuse, were he of a mind to excuse a lack of progress.

He sat back again. It was not just Jedi that stuck in Vader's memory. Loyalty and betrayal, seen up close, stuck as well. He spoke of the Force users, light and dark, with a measure of professional appreciation. The traitors received sourer epitaphs. Of course it was well known that Vader valued undying loyalty. Of the kind that killed you. Hardly surprising that he would remember the times he saw that value fail . . .

Harvan brought up another snippet he had tagged for later review, watched the movements of Vader's helmet as he spoke.

" _The Inquisitors were trained to hunt Force users who posed a threat to the Empire and ensure their loyalty or their death."_ A tilt, a turn to the side. Almost contemplative. _"I will be a target for those that remain."_

" _I will be a target for those that remain."_

" _I will be a target –"_

Target. Equated to traitor. Strange how when referring to himself, he did not seem to mind it as much.


	11. Chapter 11

The fleet was on the move. A long series of hyperspace jumps confined Harvan to the flagship, all non-essential shuttle transfers suspended until they reached the next rallying point. For the first time in many days, there was no need to eat alone in his cabin while he planned his next line of questioning.

Instead, he went down to the mess hall.

It buzzed with life and noise, several hundred people from nearly as many species jostling past and talking to one another. He collected a tray and the appropriate ration packs, noting with some surprise that they were of a superior brand to the ones he had been choking down recently: clearly someone had managed to secure new supplies. As he looked around for somewhere to sit, he caught his name being called out through the hubbub.

"Sahtou! Over here!"

He followed the voice across to a Zeltron and a Sulustrian sitting in the corner of the room, both clad in the loose coveralls of Alliance engineers. Kaitis and T'deum Zun. They had been part of the first rebel cell he had joined, the first people to give him shelter after he threw away his old life. He thought of them as friends and hoped they reciprocated.

"Where the skotz have you been hiding, then?" Kaitis asked as soon as he sat down, spearing a choice bit of unidentifiable protein with her fork.

"Assignment for the General," he answered, trying not to make it sound in any way interesting. Which given that he was speaking to an empath and someone whose ears could pick up every minor modulation in his voice was likely a futile effort.

Zun snorted, proving the point. [We're all on assignments from the General on this ship. Why's this one kept you out of the mess for weeks on end?] He swirled the contents of his plate. [I mean, you've been missing all . . . this.]

"Yes, it's a great trial," Harvan admitted dryly, "But I'm afraid I can't tell you." He shrugged apologetically. "Sorry."

"Hmph." Kaitis leaned towards him. There was grease smeared across her cheek, as usual. "You know it looks like you're part of the rumours going around, right?"

He felt his stomach turn over. "What rumours?"

[Lot of shuttle flights at odd hours,] Zun said around a mouthful of food, [Top-ranked bodies flying out to one of the outlier corvettes. All very hush-hush.]

"Been taking any hush-hush shuttle rides lately, Harv?" Kaitis prompted.

"You know if I say I can't talk about my assignment, I really can't talk about it." Giving them a pleading look, he applied himself to his meal.

"OK, OK, you win. But we're definitely not the only ones who want to know. Especially after General Solo nearly knocked Commander Skywalker's block off in front of the entire second shift ground crew."

Harvan fumbled his cutlery, making it clatter against the tray. "Excuse me?"

[Wow, you really must have been busy not to hear about that! Sure. They were really going for it the other day, all the way along starboard access and out into the main hanger. Heard Ackbar threatened to kick them off the ship afterwards. No one has any idea what they were actually arguing about though.]

"The rumour," and Kaitis stressed the word, "is that we pulled some high-ranking Impie off the Death Star and Skywalker's trying to get the Princess to help interrogate them."

There was of course no question who 'the Princess' was.

Harvan stuffed his mouth full and chewed determinedly.

"No wonder Solo flipped his top," Kaitis went on when it was clear he was not going to contribute further to the conversation, "Asking her to be in the same room as someone like that after what the Empire did to her! After Alderaan! What was Skywalker thinking? His own sister, damnit!"

The news that Commander Skywalker was actually the long-lost twin brother of Leia Organa had been greeted with relative indifference by the fleet. This was, after all, the first Jedi in a generation, the Death Star-Killer and a young man who had survived duels with both Darth Vader and the Emperor himself. Few coincidences would have seemed too far-fetched.

[Keep it down, will you?] Zun muttered, glancing at the next table over. He rubbed at his overlapping jowls. [I'm sure Ackbar could find the time to kick _us_ off the ship too.]

"Yeah, well." Her lip twisted but she lowered her voice all the same. "I'd have wanted to knock him on his behind too, is all I'm saying."

Harvan sighed. "Yes . . ."

Zun sighed too. [You're still not going to tell us anything, are you?]

He was saved from having to come up with another way of saying no by a sudden jolt running through the deck plating. All across the room, people cried out as their trays went clattering across the tables.

Zun and Kaitis looked at each other. "That was the hyperdrive."

[It's not supposed to do that.]

A klaxon blared, followed moments later by a booming Mon Cal voice. _"Imperial interdiction blockade! All hands to battle stations! All hands to battle stations!"_


	12. Chapter 12

"Mr Sahtou." Vader always greeted him that way. 'Mr Sahtou.' Neutral and as non-committal as his voice would allow.

The implied respectfulness set Harvan's teeth on edge. He clenched his mouth tightly shut and took his seat. Part of the problem was the implied requirement to respond in kind and he had yet to come up with a form of address that made the slightest sense in the current context. 'Lord Vader' seemed out of the question and beyond that, what was there?

"You came to no harm during the attack?"

His head jerked up, astonishment temporarily driving away his persisting reluctance to look at Vader directly. The query sounded bizarre and uncomfortable coming through the mask's voice box. Surely as uncomfortable as it must have sat in the mouth of the man behind it.

"I . . . n-no," Harvan stammered, "Th-thank you."

The surreality of the exchange wrecked his composure for a good half-minute. Only then did the appropriate response fight its way to his lips. "And you?"

"No." Of course not. And if he had, Harvan would have known about it. "It seems this ship was kept safely at the edge of the battle. The skill of the crew prevented any serious damage."

Was he fishing for details? Harvan did not know how much he had been told, by the crew, by Skywalker, by whoever had been assigned to gather intelligence from him. Statements that invited confirmation or denial were the enemy of the interrogator and this seemed to fit the type. Yet if that was the intent, there was little effort behind it. Vader lapsed into silence, seemingly unconcerned with pursuing the subject further.

Harven looked down at this notes. The sketched details of the Imperial side of the Battle of Yavin stared up at him. His insides clenched. The eighteenth year of the Empire. The year everything had changed for the Alliance. The year everything had changed for him.

And perhaps for Vader too.

He forced the memories from his mind, hoping against hope that any waver in his emotions would stay hidden. "Was it on the Emperor's command that you sought out the pilot who destroyed the Death Star?"

From the lack of reaction, he knew Vader had anticipated the question. There was something a bit too composed in his posture and in the slow tilt of his helmet. That made sense. It was an obvious question to ask.

"I chose to pursue him on my own account. It was not at the Emperor's bidding."

"And he . . . permitted that?"

A pause. The brief silence of someone searching for the right words. "I searched discreetly at first. I could mask my actions within the wider search for the rebel leaders."

"But you _were_ looking for that pilot?"

"Yes."

The Alliance had learned only slowly of Vader's search for Commander Skywalker, largely after the fact. A trail of bounty hunters and hired spies stretched across the Outer Rim, all of them in some way employed to track down that one singular pilot. Much of the speculation placed the dark lord's reasons as wounded pride and spite. The gradual expansion of Skywalker's apparent Jedi abilities threw a new light on the subject but to many nursing old nightmares and wounds inflicted by the Empire's Inquisitors, the apparent personal attention hinted at something more. As rumours spread like wild-fire following the disaster on Hoth – the public murder of an Imperial Admiral, an unusually vicious act even by Vader's capricious standards, the open hiring of bounty hunters to track not the fleeing command staff but the Millennium Falcon specifically, the invasion of the Bespin refineries – it became clear that this was a personal matter, something that drove the Emperor's Fist to strike out against one man regardless of the cost in ships and troops.

"Why?"

Harvan sat, waiting for the answer, the sound of Vader's breathing cutting the silence apart with new keenness. He watched and listened for every slight change, for all those little tells that exposed the lingering humanity behind the mask. For once, the other man's fearsome aspect did not matter in the slightest. All thoughts of either manners or menace were driven away as Harven suddenly needed more than anything to hear the answer to the question. To hear him _say it_.

Vader's head rose fractionally, an almost proud gesture. "Because he is my son."

* * *

 _Note: Just to clear something up regarding the chapter lengths - I know they're all quite short but unfortunately, I couldn't come up with a way to break the story into larger chunks that consistently worked. The ends of scenes are pretty much the only place it seemed to me to be natural to break the story. Sorry about that - but I hope the frequent updates salve at least some of that problem._


	13. Chapter 13

Harvan tore through the Alliance databanks for every last mention of the Jedi Knight called Anakin Skywalker.

It was not an easy job. Even accounting for the fact that they had only intermittent access to the official Imperial records and wildly erratic selections from other sources, mentions of any specific Jedi were few and far between. Even mentions of the Jedi Order in general were usually fleeting. He discovered a cache of holonet reports from the Clone Wars, an excited news reader extolling the bravery and daring of Republic forces against their wicked enemies. Going by those, it would have been easy to assume that the Jedi Generals were galaxy-wide celebrities, their exploits known to every schoolchild. Perhaps they had been. But in the end, the censors had done their job too well, successfully burying the past under a layer of misinterpretation and half-truth that was in itself hollow and useless only as an indication of what the Empire wanted.

So he resorted to the ephemera, the side-notes and all the minor trivia that no one bother to overwrite. The important thing for the Empire had been to slander the Jedi as warmongers, not hide the fact that a contingent of them had been deployed to Umbara or Genonosis. That one Master Windu had led a revolt against the legitimate government, not that he had once been heavily injured and trapped in a downed cruiser with certain young knight.

Local news clips, transport requisitions, casualty lists, catering inventories, financial transactions, a few scattered intelligence report scooped out from ancient databases in information raids: fragmented pieces of history, never collated, never cross-referenced until now. It all fed into the picture Harvan was building up and that picture read like so:

There was once a Jedi Knight named Anakin Skywalker. He was apprenticed to a Jedi named Kenobi. He became a warrior of some renown, enough to earn notice in obscure diplomatic dispatches. His skill earned him respect from the soldiers he served with. His recklessness earned him the ire of the officers. He insisted on doing his own fighter maintenance. He once beat an Admiral at dejarik. He hated meiloorun fruit. His presence was instrumental in thwarting an assassination attempt on at least one head of state. He had corresponded briefly with a droid augmentation firm on Sullust over the quality of their astromech parts. He borrowed several data-discs from the Minalith Station library and never returned them. He was once involved in a brawl at the pod-racing circuit on Malastare. He liked garden worlds. At the height of the Clone Wars, he helped pull off a spectacular raid on a high security prison, location unknown. His eyes were blue.

And he had been placed on the guest list for the High Sinaria Ball at the personal behest of then-Chancellor Sheev Palpatine.


	14. Chapter 14

"I need to know if they are related," Harvan said, knuckles white around another tumbler of Madine's whiskey.

The General looked at him, blinked, frowned. "Need?"

"Yes sir. It is becoming increasingly relevant."

"Harvan, you once told me that what is true is not half a relevant as what we believe to be true."

"My sincere apologies for going around stating the obvious, sir."

"Accepted, but the point stands. You yourself said you were interested in how much Vader tried to sell the idea. How essential is knowing the answer to your work?"

"I . . . have reason to believe that knowing the truth of the matter will shortly become vital to my correctly interpreting his responses, sir."

"Hm."

Madine got up abruptly and paced up and down behind his desk. He turned to stare at the starscape beyond the viewport, hands folded behind rigid back. His reflection sighed back at him as he exhaled. "Do you have any idea what would happen if it was widely known that Darth Vader had a son?" he asked softly, "Never mind that that son is a serving Alliance officer _and_ our resident Jedi Knight – what if he was just an ordinary man?"

Harvan could well imagine. "It would not end well for him. Not here. Not now."

"Exactly. Hate for the Empire is the fuel the Alliance runs on, far more so than the desire to bring back the Republic. And it is very hard to turn hate off. As far as most people in this fleet are concerned, Vader _is_ the Empire. Anyone related to him would be hated by association. I have no intention of losing Skywalker because of that. I _will not_ let the Princess be compromised by that."

The General turned around. His face was drawn behind his beard, dark thoughts layered on top of fatigue. "You will understand why I argued against doing the test in the first place."

Harvan nodded slowly. "Absolutely, sir."

"I was overruled. Maybe that will be for the best. We shall see." Madine braced his fists against his desk and scowled. "All the people you will be reporting to know this information already. Until they decide otherwise, no one else in the fleet learns of this." His voice turned deadly. "Am I quite clear?"

"Yes sir."

"In which case I can tell you that the result of that test was the worst possible one."


	15. Chapter 15

Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader floated in the air on opposite sides of Harvan's cabin.

The holograms were not images of the men themselves but rather maps of their lives, disparate data points pulled together into organic representative structures. Anakin's was skeletal, bereft of solid information. Vader's, bloated with miserable detail. Both lacking in their way. Neither a full life. Half-lives perhaps. Halves of the same life?

That was the question. There were points of intersection, places where the two maps almost overlapped, or could have overlapped if a few more facts could be added in. But the gulf remained. That Anakin Skywalker had existed and that Vader was paternally related to Commander Skywalker did not automatically equate to Anakin and Vader being one and the same. They had no biometric data on any Jedi from before the purge. There could be a dozen explanations for the relationship that did not mean that Vader had once been Anakin. Commander Skywalker might not be Commander 'Skywalker' at all. That was just the simplest explanation and Harvan's experience told him that 'simple' was not a consistently reliable indicator of 'true'.

He was still inclined to believe it though.

That was partly due to the coincidences. For example: it was a fact that Anakin Skywalker had visited a pod-racing circuit on Malastare. It was another fact that before the Clone Wars, pod-racing had been big business on the planet Tatooine. Tatooine was also the world on which Commander Skywalker had been raised. And it was one of the very few planets Darth Vader did not want to talk about _at all_. A thin thread to be sure, but far from the only one. Weave enough gossamer strands together and they became strong.

It was also due to a growing conviction that Darth Vader did not lie at all well. Oh, he could omit facts and divert topics as well as anyone but actual untruths came clumsily from his mouth. They were . . . beneath him. More than that: they _aggravated_ him. His reaction to the Emperor's more flagrant deceits were evidence enough of that. Back to loyalty and betrayal again . . .

Which fed into another reason: Commander Skywalker. Because it was clear that not only had Vader believed absolutely in his son's identity, he had wanted more than anything for his son to believe it too. Skywalker was the one person in the galaxy that Vader _needed_ to have believe him. Harvan wondered if Vader would even be capable of deceiving his son, over anything. He very much doubted it.

Then, ultimately, there was thing he kept coming back to: that guest list and the knowledge that the Emperor had never done anything without a reason. Inviting a lone Jedi to a state ball. The very act spoke of encouraging friendship, or implied patronage. All done to lay the groundwork for the day he turned that Jedi on the rest of the knights? Not a difficult thing to believe of a man who had tricked a thousand worlds into voting him dictator for life.

Why, he asked himself – and by extension, the mass of information he had collected – would the Emperor take an interest in a specific Jedi if not to put him to a specific use?

It fit. Nothing he uncovered contradicted the notion. Rearranging the maps chronologically allowed him to place them, one over the other, with only the slightest of gaps. The last reference to Anakin was a few scant weeks before Empire Day; the first to Vader, mere months afterwards. They could very well – no, they _probably were_ the same person, in his opinion at least.

But then, so what?

The bold fact that Darth Vader really was Anakin Skywalker explained little and excused nothing. Harvan was not there to sit in judgement but he still needed to understand. As the pure thrill of discovery faded, he found himself no closer to that understanding than when he had started.


	16. Chapter 16

"The confrontation on Bespin was a mistake." Another flat admission. "I had not appreciated Luke's resolve. That cost me my success."

And cost General Calrissian a city and the people of that city their lives free of Imperial control. To Vader, these were peripheral details. Luke Skywalker, Jedi in training, was the be-all and end-all of the narative as far as he was concerned.

Only not entirely. Harvan caught a crack in his voice when he talked of the torture inflicted on Leia Organa. The same thing had happened once before, while recounting the hunt for the Death Star plans. Hindsight had played a cruel trick on Vader when it came to his daughter. He was always at his most halting when she entered his recollections.

His son was quite a different matter.

As much as he described Commander Skywalker's defiance on Cloud City as a defeat, he did so proudly, in terms of obvious admiration. The detail he recalled of the duel was unmatched by anything he had described previously. He spoke of his son's emotions, of determination and controlled dread giving way to fear and pain. He outlined the plan with which he had tried to ensnare the younger man: the carbon freeze chamber, the careful control of the service corridors, the sabotage to the _Millennium Falcon_ to cover all possibilities, the suffering of friends to summon his target across half the galaxy –

The Force was not something Harvan pretended to understand. He accepted that it was real on the basis of the Emperor's purge and the recorded feats, such that remained, of Jedi of the past. So he believed Vader when he said that he could both sense Commander Skywalker's emotions and influence them from afar. At the same time, he was doubtful about the benefits of trying to drive an enemy you hope to capture into a rage. Perhaps he misunderstood when Vader talked of encouraging Luke to embrace the dark side. Or perhaps there was more to the attempt than just tipping the balance of the fight.

"I forced Luke out to the edge of the regulator vane. I . . . disarmed him." Vader looked away for a second. "The shock of the injury removed any possibility of further defiance. I assumed that would make him more pliable."

"Why?"

The mask swung back, pinning Harvan with its dead stare.

"I . . . I-I . . . mean, why did you assume that any of this would make him surrender to you? By that point Commander Skywalker was fully a part of the Alliance. He . . . I'm going by casual accounts but . . . he thought you had _killed_ his father. You had just dealt him a crippling injury. Any one else caught in that situation could have expected nothing but torture and death by surrendering to you. Why would he have thought any differently?"

"He would not. As I told you, I had intended to avoid this confrontation for precisely that reason. I knew that he would not willingly turn himself over to me. That is why I told him who I really was."

"You . . . told him then? _That_ was when Commander Skywalker first found out you were . . . well, his father?"

"Yes. He did not know. As you said, Obi Wan Kenobi had told him that I killed his father. To keep him safe . . ." Vader trailed off in a manner that might have been thoughtful.

"And you thought that would make a difference?"

"I . . . believed it would. That if Luke knew the truth he would accept that there was only one path out of that place. That it would . . ." The sentence died into more heavy breaths, unfinished.

Harvan waited for a moment, biting down the instinct to complete it with 'establish a connection.' That would be speculation and worse, leading the witness. "It didn't work. Did it?"

"No." The word was heavy with regret. "I underestimated him. He chose oblivion over joining me."

"What would have happened if he hadn't? I mean," Harvan clarified hastily, "if he had surrendered to you. What would have happened to him?"

"He would have been brought before the Emperor. That was my master's command."

"And then?"

"He would have been taught the ways of the Dark Side. The Emperor would have shown him his full potential."

"As he did you?"

"Yes."

"Is that what you wanted?"

"You have not asked me that question about anything else I have done." The retort was surprisingly petulant.

It still made Harvan's skin prickle with sweat. "I . . . appreciate that. But we . . . haven't been talking about handing your son over to the Emperor before." He forced the words out in a rush, half-afraid they would choke him.

Vader lifted his hands, fingers curling. Harvan watched them in horrified fascination. "I . . ." Hands became fists. Then lowered, relaxing. "No. I wanted to train Luke myself. So that he might become my ally. He was strong. Together we could have destroyed the Emperor. We could have . . . ruled together." Vader's voice hissed away, distant and preoccupied. " _That_ is what I wanted."


	17. Chapter 17

Harvan hurried through the corridors of _Home-One_ , mind only partially on avoiding the people thronging around him. Over and over he turned Vader's admission, the words, the intonation, every aspect of what he had witnessed.

It was of course no real surprise that the enforcer had sought to overthrow the master. Why would it be, when such power-plays were exactly what Palpatine had encouraged in those he saw as his lessers? The Empire's history was littered with such jockeying for position, up to and including attempts on the throne.

Usually ones that ended with Vader's hands around the perpetrator's throat, funnily enough.

No, the interest was purely in that _this_ was how Vader had reacted to discovering he had a son. To offer him conquest of the galaxy. It sounded absurd. It was appalling. Obscene.

Yet what else could Vader have offered?

Some awareness of time returning as he reached the hanger, Harvan took the last dozen metres to the shuttle at a run, jumping aboard to a risible hoot from the talz pilot. Calling his apologies along the cabin as the hatch slammed behind him, Harvan scrambled for a seat. It was only as he clipped the restraints into place that he realised he was not alone.

Wookies were rare in the ranks of the Alliance. That was not due to any lack of fellow-feeling and certainly not to divergent goals: the slavery the Empire practised stood as one of its most vile crimes, one specifically singled out in the oaths by which the Rebellion had been begun. The truth was, however, that during the days when the Alliance's only real strengths lay in secrecy and subterfuge, the people of Kashyyyk were singularly unsuited to the fight. Even now, with the cause triumphantly shouted to the stars, few had openly declared their support.

The upshot of which was that Chewbacca was one of the most recognisable faces in the fleet.

He sat on the other side of the cabin, looking distinctly uncomfortable in the relatively cramped passenger space. As far as Harvan could tell, he was carrying nothing except his bandoleer but there was a bulky toolbox on the floor at his feet.

"Good morning, sir," Harvan said, with as much cordiality as he could given that he was still out of breath from the dash.

Chewbacca growled a curt greeting back at him and fidgeted awkwardly.

They sat in silence for a few minutes as the shuttle performed the complex dance necessary to pass safely from _Home-One_ 's shadow and weave a path through the fleet proper. Through the view-ports, Harvan caught sight of fighters drifting at an apparent full-stop and beyond them, the frigates and corvettes that trailed in the star-cruiser's wash. How many of those crews out there owed their lives to Luke Skywalker, he wondered? How many had cheered the pilot who killed the Death Star with the same fervour they cursed his father?

Chewbacca shifted again. Harvan looked across at him thoughtfully. It suddenly occurred to him that he was sitting across from one of the few people who had known from the start about Vader's escape from the Empire's second planet-killer. He knew that the Alliance leadership had learnt of it roughly a day after the victory at Endor and had read Madine's reports backwards and forwards trying to make sense of the sequence of events. What exactly had happened in the day not covered by those reports, however, remained unclear.

Except to the being sitting opposite him now.

"Excuse me, sir?" Harvan said before his second thoughts could catch up with him, "May I ask you a question?"

Chewbacca started and looked across at him, great shaggy eyebrows rising in surprise. People did not generally speak to him except to be polite, largely due to the fact most would have been unable to decipher the responses. He gave a cautiously affirmative _arf_.

"I wondered . . . please tell me if this is not something I should be asking . . . but I wondered if you could tell me whether the, err, the prisoner said anything when he first arrived on Endor's moon?"

The ex-smuggler leant his head to one side. What was that to Harvan, he asked with no particular warmth.

Which was a fair question. "I . . . it's the one piece of information I don't have. I suppose I'm curious."

Chewbacca _rowled_ an amused observation. So he was the poor chump asking Vader for his life story, was he?

"Yes . . . I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked. Forgive me."

No, no. One great paw waved dismissively. It was a fair question to ask, nothing to get offended over. He would just be better asking Skywalker or the Princess. Chewbacca could not add much more than what was in the official report, mainly that Vader had come off the stolen shuttle semi- or completely unconscious. Skywalker had begged them to help stabilise his condition, babbling about the Emperor having attacked him and Vader taking the brunt of the blast to save him. In all honesty, Chewbacca's first reaction had very much been to offer to finish the job but it was hard to say no to a man who had saved his – he used a word that Harvan knew roughly translated as 'life-bearer', meaning General Solo – his life-bearer's life. So he'd been convinced to help rig up a bypass system to restore the failing life-support suit. Between them, he and Skywalker's astromech had been able to halt the deterioration before it could become irreversible. And that was that.

"Thank you," Harvan said. It was certainly worth knowing who had done the field repairs on Vader's suit, even if the account did not give him any new details about Vader himself. He did not tell Chewbacca that he would keep what he had been told in strictest confidence. Trust, in the Wookie sense, was something given and proven by actions. Promises would have added nothing.

Irony, General Madine had called it, that Vader owed his life to a Jedi. Harvan found it a far greater irony that he owed it to someone who the Empire saw as little more than raw material.


	18. Chapter 18

Once on board the prison ship, Chewbacca hefted his tool box, _youped_ a brief farewell to Harvan and disappeared with Sergeant Disris towards the forward sections. A surly-looking Deveronian corporal took Disris' place as Harvan's escort down to the cell deck.

It was getting easier to step into the inner chamber. If he closed his eyes while the antechamber cycled, the darkness came as less of a shock and he could take a moment to steel himself against what waited inside. Even if familiarity had yet to inure him to that, at least he no longer stumbled on the threshold.

Most of the time.

His composure cracked when he saw that Vader was no longer sitting in his chair but standing before one of the walls.

Had Anakin been so tall or was that the result of the prosthetics? He towered over Harvan and over most of the people Harvan could think of who were not Wookies. Even seen from the back, the silhouette was powerful and uncompromising, the flare of the helmet flowing into broad shoulders and thick arms. Vader's rigid posture had always leant him the air of a durasteel sculpture; standing only heightened the effect.

The focus of his attention was a screen, discretely set into the bulkhead. It showed a woman's head a shoulders. She was dark haired and quietly striking, her mouth upturned in an distracted half-smile. Her eyes were directed at something off to the side of the picture, presumably whatever it was that elicited the smile.

Vader did not move or respond to Harvan's presence for a good minute after the door closed. When he did, it was slowly, as though he were waking from a dream. With a curt thrust of his hand, he deactivated the screen and turned, breathing hitching then easing. "Mr Sahtou."

Harvan caught himself halfway through a slight bow and stumbled towards the chair storage. Vader sat down behind him. There was nothing to indicate he was perturbed by the interruption to his reverie.

Harvan managed to get himself seated without tripping over, which he counted as a small victory. As usual, it took him at least twenty seconds to find the right point in his notes –

"Do you intend to ask who that image was of?"

The question was startling if only because it was the first time that Vader had spoken before Harvan had. He gaped for a second, clamped his mouth shut for another, then found his voice again. "I know who she is."

That actually seemed to surprise Vader. "You . . . know?"

He nodded. "If . . . if you would like to tell me why you were looking at her image, I will listen, of course, but you are . . . that is to say . . . if it is relevant . . ."

"Relevant," Vader echoed, "You may judge it to be. I have watched you take note more than my words, Mr Sahtou. You consider my manner and my reactions. I am sure this would be of great interest to you."

A new and interesting variation on icy fear turned Harvan's stomach over. The statement was no mere retort: it was a challenge. Vader was daring him to pry further into the matter.

"As . . . as I said when we began, I am a recorder. I'm here to listen to the details you are willing to give. I'm n-not here to demand information." Harvan swallowed, tongue dry and thick in his mouth. "I will listen to whatever you wish to tell me. The choice remains yours."

Somewhat to his own astonishment, he realised he was issuing a challenge back at Vader. The hiss of the respirator was suffocatingly loud in the silence that followed.

Vader stirred, the fingers of the replacement hand clattering against each other as he flexed them. "It has been a long time since I could look on her face with anything other than anger and pain," he said as quietly as the mask would allow. In that instant, there was a crack in the durasteel. "I am not yet prepared to talk of her."

Harvan nodded again. "I understand. Can we return to what happened after Bespin?"

"As you wish."


	19. Chapter 19

Harvan discovered that one phrase reoccurred throughout his notes, right from the start. Not one of Vader's – a phrase he himself was starting to write more and more often as they talked.

'People matter to him.'

It was a strange thing to write about someone whose idea of personnel management was to throttle under-performers. But it was true. Vader was one of those people who thought in terms of the individuals he met. It was never the circumstances or the situation that caused failure of a mission; it was whoever had been tasked with carrying it out. The Rebellion was not a matter of politics but of personal betrayal. A planet blasted to dust from afar was of no consequence; one young man who happened to be related to him, on the other hand . . .

There was nothing especially unusual about that. It was a reasonably normal psychological state and attitude. A great many people ignored statistics and acted instead on connections to others. Such behaviour crossed species and cultures. So many in the fleet were there because of who they had lost to the Empire's brutality, rather than the more general outrage that drove the likes of Mon Mothma and General Dodonna. It would be foolish to deny Imperials acted from similar motivations.

The only reason it came as a surprise in Vader was that it was natural to equate 'people mattering' with empathy and empathy with compassion, a quality singularly lacking in the Emperor's Fist. But a sadist required as much empathy as a saint: the difference lay only in how an understanding of others was applied. Just because you appreciated that other people had feelings and desires of their own did not necessarily mean that you liked them or trusted them. Sometimes quite the opposite.

People mattered to Vader because he considered them fallible and threatening. The Emperor dominated his life and he hated him for it because he understood all too well how little Palpitane really thought of him. The generals and admirals of the Imperial war machine were all caught up in their greed for advancement and their petty rivalries, placing them beneath his contempt. The senators and governments he was sent to intimidate or crush were equally dull and predictable, obsessed with status. The rebels and insurgents were fools, pursuing a delusion of liberty. All of them disrupted the way things were supposed to be. Always, people were the problem.

And Vader took people's mistakes as personal attacks.

Or had. Did he still? Harvan remained unsure if anything had really changed now that he was the Alliance's prisoner. Was it even something that could be altered by changing circumstances? It was easy to believe that being able to read the emotions and guilt of others would make their foibles strike hard. Easy too to believe that without the cultural cushioning of natural empaths like the Zeltrons, it would be near impossible to look past the baser aspects of someone's character. Add in the barrier of severe injury and all-enclosing life-support armour, making it impossible for any normal interaction, and likely anyone would have been left with a poor view of the rest of the cosmos.

So few of Vader's larger actions on the Empire's behalf seemed to have been of his own volition. He went as his master commanded. It was only in the finer details that he showed initiative, spiteful and malicious though it was. When it came to the fate of the galaxy, he really did not care.

Perhaps, given all that, it was less surprising that his son had been able to get through to him. As near as Harvan could tell, Luke Skywalker was the first person in nearly two decades to whom Darth Vader had mattered simply as another person.


	20. Chapter 20

"Luke's control over his emotions was impressive. Despite giving in to the urge to kill the Emperor, he remained able to elude my sense of where he was." Vader paused for a couple of seconds, then continued. "I reached to his surface thoughts and tried to find a way of drawing him into the open. Of forcing him to give in to the anger that would awaken the true power of the dark side within him."

"Why?" Harvan asked.

"Why?" Vader repeated after another short silence, in apparent confusion.

"Um, w-well . . . why did you want to do that?"

The steady hiss of the respirator told him that the question had not hit a nerve, yet it was a good while before Vader answered it.

"If Luke gave in to the dark side, I believed together, he and I would have had the power to destroy the Emperor. The Jedi teachings Obi Wan had given him were preventing him from accessing that power. I believed I needed to break through them."

"Ah, yes . . . but, ah, forgive me, but if you were fighting Commander Skywalker at the time . . . if you made him angry and he tapped into this power, wouldn't it be more more likely that he would have ended up killing you?"

"That is . . . close to what transpired," Vader admitted slowly, "It was a risk."

"Then why take it?"

This time, the gap between question and answer was almost enough for Harvan to risk a second prompt, something he had never had to do before.

"The Emperor would only have allowed one of us to leave that room alive." Vader's hands flexed once again at the memory. "He had decided that either he would have a new apprentice or he would prove that his old one was devoted to the dark side. To him. Any threat of his designs not being fulfilled and he would have killed us both. I had to fight. Any hesitation would have doomed us both."

"So . . . you were buying time?"

Vader said nothing. Then, "Luke believes that I may have been seeking my own destruction to ensure that he survived."

"Do you believe you were?" To Harvan's ear at least, the dark lord did not sound convinced by the idea.

Lifting the bare replacement hand, Vader stared at it. "If Luke had not turned aside his anger, he would have killed me. It is possible he would have killed the Emperor as well. The idea was in my mind when we fought." He deliberately made a fist, the motors in the hand whining with the pressure. "But so was the knowledge that the dark side is easy to channel and hard to control. It can destroy an opponent as quickly as it saves them. Breaking Luke's discipline would also have weakened his defences. I had the greater experience. He would have been . . . vulnerable."

Harvan's stylus clattered against his datapad. "You would have killed him? After all you did to find him?"

"I did not wish to die." Vader lowered his fist, lowered his head, studied the floor between them. "This life is a mockery but it _is_ life. To be Sith is to cling to existence at all costs. For so long, my anger and hatred, all that I had lost, those emotions sustained me. I could not let go of them. Not even then. Not even for Luke."

"But . . . Commander Skywalker still bested you?"

"I taunted him with the thought of turning his sister to the dark side." It was as close to a whisper as Vader could manage. "His rage broke free and he . . . came within a hand's breadth of killing me. He has told me that it was only the realisation that this hand was artificial, so like his own, that stopped him. And in that instant, he regained his control. His anger left him and he felt only pity for me. I . . . felt him turn back to the light."

"And the Emperor?" Harvan asked, picturing the scene in his mind of a triumphant Jedi Knight turning aside the blow that would have killed his helpless opponent.

"The Emperor saw his victory snatched away. The battle outside did not matter to him. The Rebellion was insignificant before his ultimate weapon. Only Luke mattered. His rage at losing his prize . . . he attacked Luke with that fury, striking him down in agony. He nearly killed him." Vader's whole frame seemed to reverberate the memory. "Luke begged me to save him. I had a choice between watching my son die or defying my master. I knew I would die if I turned on the Emperor. His power would consume me. I was . . . afraid. Luke was begging to me, pleading . . . I . . ." Vader opened his hand. "I chose. My life for Luke's. It felt . . . right. To give my life to save my son." His fingers found the scorch marks on his chest plate, tracing the burns. "I threw the Emperor into the tower's superstructure. The Emperor always enjoyed the sensation of standing high above others. That . . . did not serve him well in the end."

"Y-you . . . you expected to die?"

Vader finally looked at Harvan again. "Yes. I am only alive because of Luke."

"And . . . despite what you said about clinging to life . . .?"

"Knowing I had saved my son . . ." The helmet nodded once, just slightly. "Despite my weakness, despite all that I had done . . . knowing that Luke lived in the light . . . knowing that, I would have died at peace."

His voice faltered on the final word, though he still held Harvan's eye. The truth of how close the choice had been hung unspoken in the air between them.


	21. Chapter 21

"Mr Sahtou!" The shout echoed down the corridor, reaching him over the clatter and hubbub of moving people. "Excuse me, Mr Sahtou!"

Commander Skywalker hurried towards him through the throng, slipping around troopers and crewmen as though he knew where they would be before they reached him. He was dressed in his black uniform, though with the jacket hanging open. As he got close, Harvan saw the faint bags under his eyes and the lines of exhaustion drawing at the edges of his mouth. His quick, assured movements belied the tiredness on his face but it was clear that he was in need of a decent night's rest.

"Commander." Harvan pressed himself against the bulkhead so that they could talk slightly out of the main flow of traffic. "Can I help you, sir?"

"Ah, yes." Skywalker gave a slight smile, which put a little energy back into his expression. "I was wondering if you had a few minutes to talk."

Strictly speaking, Harvan could probably have refused. While the Commander technically out-ranked him, he was also officially a fighter pilot, outside Madine's tactical forces unit. He was not, therefore, Harvan's actual superior and did not have the authority to issue orders to him without going through the General first. On the other hand, Skywalker's position as Leia Organa's brother gave him access to the entire Alliance command structure, up to and including Mon Mothma herself. The effort to make it an actual order would really have been minimal on his part, even without going into the fraught question of how a Jedi Knight fitted into any chain of authority. The fact that he was catching Harvan's attention in a corridor and asking it as a question spoke volumes.

Harvan glanced at his chrono. "General Madine's briefing room should be free at the moment, sir. We could talk there if you wanted privacy."

"Yes. Thank you. That sounds great."

The briefing room was compact, sized for small groups of tacticians and commandos. They sat a couple of chairs apart around one end of the oval table, almost at right angles to each other. "Mr Sahtou," Commander Skywalker began as soon as they were seated, "I need to talk to you about my father."

Harvan nodded, saying nothing. There were, after all, few other subjects that they had in common.

Skywalker folded his hands together, forefingers extended and touching. "This is . . . I know this is a delicate subject and I wouldn't ask to speak with you about it unless I thought it was absolutely necessary, of course –"

"Commander, if I have given you any cause for complaint –"

"Oh, no! No, that's not it at all. You conduct – that's not the problem. In fact . . . my father has spoken of how much he respects the way you have gone about interviewing him." He cleared his throat, perhaps appreciating how little the average Rebel wanted to hear praise from Darth Vader. "No, I simply wanted to talk to you about the kinds of questions you've been asking him recently."

He rocked his hands back and forward, forefingers gesturing at the far wall. Harvan stayed silent, letting him build up to whatever point he was trying to make. For a Jedi Knight, and all the mystic mastery that implied, Commander Skywalker did not seem especially sure of himself.

"Ever since we brought him back to the fleet, I've been trying to help my father come to terms with what has happened. He's vulnerable at the moment. Not . . . not physically, or at least that's not what I really mean – he's turned from the dark side and I honestly don't know if anyone has ever done that before. It's taken an enormous strain on him and stripped him of a great deal of the power he used to keep himself . . . functional. I've been helping him meditate, trying to use the healing techniques I was taught to ease his pain but . . ." He trailed off and shrugged. "I don't have the skills to truly help him and there's not a lot the doctors can do either." Inclining his head, he closed his eyes for a second. "This must sound strange, talking about Darth Vader being vulnerable, wanting to help heal him –"

"Not at all, Commander," Harvan said quickly.

Skywalker looked straight at him. His gaze had an intensity to it that suggested he was seeing far deeper than Harvan's face. After a moment, he nodded. "Of course. I'm sorry. I guess I've gotten used to people laughing me out of the room when I talk about it. What I mean to say is that a great deal of what Jedi do depends on their state of mind. That's not just about emotions, though that is part of it – it's about where your thoughts dwell and what you focus on, how those things shift the way you view the world. You have to be aware of all that and be able to control it. For a very long time, for my father, that has meant channelling his anger and pain into strengthening himself. The dark side of the Force."

"So he has to learn to use the, ah, light side instead?" It sounded to Harvan somewhat like dealing with an addiction.

"Exactly. I suppose we're trying to retrain his Force 'muscle memory'. Part of that is avoiding the states of mind he's used to and . . . Mr Sahtou, this really isn't meant as a criticism, but the kinds of questions you've been asking him recently have very much stirred up darker thoughts."

"Are you saying that . . . your father is in danger of slipping back to the, um, dark side?" Harvan asked carefully, keeping his face as still as possible.

"No, not at all." Skywalker shook his head emphatically. "There is absolutely no danger of that. What there is a danger of is his being unable to cope with the constant pain he lives with. He wants to help us, he wants to make some kind of amends for what he has done but if he cannot centre himself and draw on the Force, he could become totally incapacitated."

"I see . . ."

Harvan fixed his eyes on the table top in front of him, running what Commander Skywalker had said through his mind. "So, you want me to stop . . . asking about certain subjects in order to spare his state of mind?"

"Just in the short term. Really, once he is strong enough, I know he will be able to answer anything you put to him. He wants to, he really does." Skywalker's face was full of earnest concern now, calm assurance dropping away to reveal a man pleading for his father. It suddenly came home to Harvan that, though far older than his years, the young Jedi was still very much that: young – and clearly his training gave him no greater insight into the situation than the rest of them.

"Commander . . ." Harvan hesitated. "You . . . do you . . . ah . . . sir, what do you think my role here is?"

Skywalker frowned. "To talk to my father about what he did for the Empire. That's how it was explained to me. To hear his side of the what happened."

"Yes. That's certainly part of it. But that's not all – may I ask, sir, how much thought you've given to exactly what it is that your father will be accused of, when he's brought to trial?"

The other man's frown deepened considerably. "Mr Sahtou, I saw what the Empire did to Alderaan, and what it did on hundreds of other worlds. I understand exactly what it is that my father helped bring about –"

"With the greatest of respect, Commander Skywalker," Harvan interrupted, as gently as he could, "I'm really not sure you do."

Taking a deep breath, he took his eyes off the table. "Twenty years ago, the Republic was a flawed, failing institution. It was a thousand-year-old bureaucracy, so of course it had problems, however much the idea behind it was basically good. In that system, the Emperor – as Chancellor – wielded an unequalled amount of power. Whether that was because of the Force or simply because he was an unmatched politician – he, almost alone, had the power to fix the Republic. He could have used all that influence to turn it around. I don't think anyone having that kind of power is right but however you look at it, the truth remains that he could have made the Republic what it was supposed to be: a place in which everyone had a voice and every voice was heard. He could have chosen to do that. But he didn't. Instead, he pulled the Republic apart."

Skywalker was watching him closely, but he did not say anything so Harvan ploughed on. "The wars he incited killed billions and destabilised thousands of planets. The Republic collapsed and he replaced it with a dictatorship that was little more than a war machine slaved to his whims. Billions more were killed simply because they didn't move fast enough when the Empire told them to. Whole worlds were cracked open and strip-mined to supply the resources for Death Stars and Star Destroyers. Do you know how many workers, on average, die every year in the Imperial construction yards? Nine hundred and twenty thousand, seven hundred and fifty six. There are planetary capitals with lower populations than that. And that's just day-to-day – the median. For the super-weapons, the rates are at least triple that. Then there are the people killed as part of 'civilising' the fringes of the Empire and 'maintaining order' in the core worlds, which easily doubles the number of people who died in the Clone Wars. Which is not including the people who die because they join active rebellions, be that actually fighting in fleets like this, smaller scale actions or simply speaking out and trying to bring the Empire's crimes into the open. Then you have to add in the people on the other side. Millions of Imperial personnel have died serving the Empire, a great many of whom had no choice but to serve. People pressured into the Imperial military or out-right conscripted make up the bulk of the Empire's soldiers. Most of them are barely trained because the sheer numbers involved mean that shooting straight doesn't need to be a priority. As long as they can pull a trigger or press a button at the right time, the Empire can afford to keep throwing them at a problem until it's gone. Entire generations have been pressed into that kind of service. There's an old joke that the only reason the Empire needs to keep expanding into the Outer Rim is to find the people-power to expand into the Outer Rim. I think that can be called 'funny because it's true', except I have seen the numbers and I don't find it funny at all.

"All that is the work of one man. The Emperor. All of it. He might not have been involved personally in every part of it but the power that he was given or took meant he could set it all in motion. He is guilty, directly or indirectly, of causing the deaths of so many people that the entire population of Alderaan was a statistically insignificant increment. All that, because of the Emperor. _The man your father pledged himself to_."

Commander Skywalker opened his mouth to say something but Harvan lifted his fingers, sheer inertia giving him the courage to keep going. "One moment, sir, please. Of course Darth Vader was not directly involved in every aspect of the Empire's running and organisation, or even most of it. But he enforced the Emperor's will. Completely and absolutely. He is responsible, personally, for a significant fraction of the total deaths the Empire caused. This is not at all in doubt because _the Empire itself made no effort to hide it_. Rumours of Vader's ferocity have been allowed to move quite freely and most of them didn't need to be exaggerated. To the galaxy, to this Alliance, to me – and I suspect to you too, before you learnt the truth – he is a monster. _Is_. The vast majority of people have no idea that he killed the Emperor and even if they did, I am not sure it would change their opinion. It does not change the facts."

Very deliberately, Harvan placed the flat of his palm on the table. "If and when he comes to trail, there is virtually no possibility of anything other than total condemnation. You know that. _He_ knows that. He does not deny anything he has done. He would be found guilty and the galaxy would cheer if we shot him immediately. The galaxy would cheer if we shot him anyway. The galaxy would cheer if we shot him _right now_ , without letting him utter one word in his defence. And that would destroy the Alliance as surely as another Death Star."

Commander Skywalker sat back in his chair, fingers still laced together. "Strike me down with all of your hate," he murmured, "And your journey to the dark side will be complete."

Harvan blinked. "Excuse me?"

"It's something the Emperor said to me. The only bit of dark side philosophy I know, I suppose. You mean, if we allow my father to be condemned without letting him speak, even if it will ultimately make no difference, we would poison everything we hope to build."

"The Alliance was supposed to create something better than the Empire. We prove that now or we make a lie out of everything we've ever done. That's what I'm doing, Commander. That's what I volunteered to do. To prove that we are going to be just and not simply give mindless vent to our anger at the Empire. To prove that we will consider the facts and the truth and listen to every side of the story. _That_ is my job, sir. And I have to do it properly. Thoroughly. Completely. Anything else won't be good enough."

"And the longer you take, the greater the chance someone outside Alliance Command finds out they're holding my father," Skywalker completed, mouth tightening into a grimace of understanding, "At which point, he will have to be put on trial immediately. Ready or not."

"Yes."

They looked at one another, each letting the other's words sink in. Commander Skywalker exhaled softly and gave another of his slight, almost shy smiles. "Thank you for being so polite about saying no to a misguided request, Mr Sahtou."

Harvan shook his head firmly. "I do not think it was at all, sir. And I hope you find a way to help your father."

"Do you?" Skywalker sighed again. "Thanks for saying so anyway. And my apologies for taking up so much of your time."


	22. Chapter 22

Pouring his efforts into uncovering traces of Anakin Skywalker had distracted Harvan from more recent accounts of the man. Another extended hyperspace jump gave him ample time to rectify the oversight.

It helped considerably that he had been involved in debriefing a great many of the Alliance's Imperial prisoners. There was a recent example he remembered especially well: a Navy trooper, recovered by good fortune from the surface of the Endor moon. Good fortune for him, that was, at the end of a string of rapidly fluctuating luck.

Toman Veturvia had been a lowly non-commissioned officer serving aboard the Super Star Destroyer _Executor_ when an A-wing ploughed through the main command bridge and set off a chain reaction of secondary explosions that sent the immense ship diving into the Death Star's heavily reinforced outer skin. Veturvia had been one of the first to abandon his post and make a dash for an escape pod, which had resulted in him being jettisoned out into the middle of a pitched space battle. By a small miracle, he escaped being blown to atoms in the cross-fire. By a rather larger one, the detonation of the _Executor_ provided enough of an impulse to knock his fragile pod into the moon's atmosphere well ahead of the subsequent explosion that consumed the Death Star itself. The pod ended up coming down in the forest several kilometres west of the main settlement of the Ewok tribe to which General Solo's strike team had entered an alliance.

It was perhaps not surprising that Veturvia's condition on being herded at spear-point into the presence of the Solo's commandos by a gaggle of hungry Ewoks had been categorised – charitably – as 'gibbering'.

The man was pathetically grateful to be taken prisoner and demonstrated both this and the kind of devotion to the cause the Empire's policies of aggressive self-interest generated by proceeding to tell the Alliance everything he knew. In the end, it took considerable effort to make him stop. The information he provided was largely useless from a military intelligence angle: he might have been serving on a flag ship but he was so low ranked that all he could really tell them about was day-to-day protocols. However, from the point of view of analysts like Harvan, his testimony was invaluable for the insight it gave into the psychology of the Imperial Navy.

Veturvia's image hovered over Harvan's desk, a dishevelled human in an ill-fitting jumpsuit, his eyes swivelling around the room as though afraid that a horde of Ewoks could jump out at him at any moment. _"You'd always know when he came aboard,"_ he was saying, stress dulling the edges of his clipped Core-worlds accent, _"The whole ship would feel colder and everyone would tense up. Sometimes it'd pass and you could get used to it. Other times, when he was angry, it'd go on for days, 'til it got hard to sleep and you had crewmen trying to work on a couple hours' rest apiece, all knowing that if they made a mistake around him . . . that'd be it."_ He mimed choking himself. _"And it wasn't just crewers, either. It was everyone, right up to the Admiral. Poor old Piet. Spent his whole life walking on cracked glass trying not to have someone else get the job like he did."_ Veturvia rubbed the side of his nose, a nervous tick that got slightly annoying if you spent too long watching him. _"Guess it must have almost been a relief to go out in a fireball instead."_ His general lack of sympathy for his comrades also got a bit wearing, even if he could not personally be blamed for the entirety of Imperial culture.

" _The worst one was probably the captain of the_ Avenger _. Uh, what was his name . . . ? Needa! That's it. Captain Needa. Brr. There was a guy who should have taken the fireball option. It was after Hoth and the_ Avenger _was right on top of that old freighter Princess Organa's always flying around in, only then they managed to lose it completely. Vanished! Never did find out how they did that. Eh, you did that. I mean. Uh. Yeah, so, Vader's going completely nova about the whole thing. We've practically got icicles growing on the bridge, he's so angry. And Needa comes over to personally apologise for messing up. Yeah. Almost got to admire the guts that took. Came in parade-ground straight too. But you could see it in his eyes. He knew he wasn't going to be leaving."_

Harvan knew what had happened next from Vader's own, detached description of the event. Knew too why the dark lord had reacted so poorly.

Lorth Needa was not a man who had deserved to die. His records, those that Harvan could access, painted him as someone of average capability and somewhat less than average cruelty for his position. Should he have shown more wit in dealing with the _Millennium Falcon_ 's erratic manoeuvring? Probably, but then Vader himself had not seen through the deception. No, the truth was that Needa's execution was an unnecessary act of spite, a punctuation mark at the end of what was, for Vader, an abysmal failure of a campaign.

" _He only got halfway through explaining what happened before Vader started . . . you know . . . kkkkkkcccch! More or less got to the end of 'I take full responsibility for this lapse' and started turning blue."_ Veturvia's impression of Needa was deeply unflattering. He paused and rubbed at his nose again. _"A minute later, he's face down on the deck and Vader . . . Vader doesn't even look down at him. Just walks past and says, 'Apology accepted, Captain Needa.' Just like that. Stars, I've heard that in my sleep too many times since. Just 'apology accepted' and then points at me and Carth Berit to clear up the mess and walks off. Just . . . walks off. Just like that."_ Veturvia swallowed hard at the memory. _"I tell you this: it made me really glad I wasn't the kind of person he ever paid any attention to."_

Even stuck in a cell at the heart of his enemies' fleet, Veturvia had been more scared of the phantom of Vader's wrath. Harvan paused the recording and scowled at the naked fear on the man's face. There was the truth of how the dark lord was seen: a monster to both sides.

During one particularly interminable planning session with the Bothawui resistance movement, Harvan heard one of the Bothans mutter that the Empire was a truly generous enemy: whenever the urge to fight them slackened, they always provided new reasons to hate them. Her words came back to him as he reached for the next set of recordings.

Toman Veturvia counted himself lucky to be beneath Vader's notice. Lorth Needa had known that his failure meant his death. They were just two among many, all those supposed allies who lived in fear Vader. Did Vader regret that oppression, all the terror he had inflicted on those who served at his command?

Would it make any difference if he did?


	23. Chapter 23

"Is there more for us to discuss, Mr Sahtou?" There was an edge of weariness to the question, or so Harvan thought. He recalled what Commander Skywalker had said about Vader using the Force to sustain himself and the snatch of diagnosis he had overheard the Mon Cal doctor giving. How much of a toll had the effort of continued life taken already?

Harvan sat down cautiously. "Ah . . . I hoped . . . I had hoped that we could return to your reasons for joining the Empire." He moistened his lips, drawing out his stylus. "That is, I would like to ask for greater detail. Ah, if you would be willing to . . . talk about that . . ."

Vader made a slight, almost dismissive gesture, then appeared to think better of it. "I did not ask my son to speak to you."

"Ah . . ." Harvan did not for one moment believe he had.

That must have been obvious to Vader because he immediately relaxed – or at least became slightly less tense. "Luke . . . cares deeply." A few, deeper than average breaths. "That can lead him to act rashly, despite his training." There was something a little peculiar about hearing Vader refer to his son in the present tense. This was not a memory, recalled after the fact – it was the man's current state of mind.

"I understand why he wanted to speak to me." Harvan chose not to say any more than that.

"You wish to know how I fell to the dark side." A statement, not a question.

"You . . . you could put it that way –" Harvan caught himself before he repeated the assertion that Vader was not required to answer. It would be pointless and only serve as an annoyance.

"And you wish to know why."

Harvan just nodded, once, quickly.

"I told you before I considered the Emperor's way necessary. That the power he held could bring order where nothing else could. That . . . was true. But as you clearly appreciate, there was more to it than that."

Harvan waited. Vader's breathing steadied. He straightened in his undersized chair. "Mr Sahtou. You have asked me why I chose to serve the Empire." That familiar tilt of the head. "Why did you defect from the Empire?"

"Wh – ah. My accent."

"Your mannerisms and your style of speech suggest you have had Imperial training." Vader flexed his hand in another dismissal. "I have had a great deal of time to observe you, Mr Sahtou."

Which was something that kept Harvan awake on nights when Vader's words alone did not. "You want to know why I joined the Rebellion."

"Yes. Who was it you lost, Mr Sahtou? What was taken from you to make you abandon safety within the system in order to oppose it?"

Protocol insisted on strict control of information shared with prisoners. _Personal_ information was especially guarded. The logic of that was obvious, particularly given that the Alliance could never be sure how long it would be able to hold any of its captives. That the prisoner in this case was Darth Vader should only have made refusing to answer easier.

"Nothing," Harvan found himself saying instead, "No one." He rubbed the edge of his datapad. "That was not why I chose to rebel." If he stopped now, no one in the fleet would blame him. If he stopped now, perhaps he could still convince Vader to talk further.

And then again, perhaps not.

"I was a systems operator at the Imperial Information Centre on Bideran. I worked in the census and statistics divisions."

"I recall the place," Vader intoned.

"You visited twice while I was there. The first time, you killed the supervisor of the second shift because errors her team made enabled a slave revolt on Kantas Five. I did not particularly like her, nor know her that well. That was the closest I came to personal loss due to the Empire. Mostly, it made me afraid. But I was in no real danger. I was fairly good at my job, the job itself was fairly minor and I was not very interested in gaining greater rank. As you said, I could have continued, quite safely, where I was."

Vader did not prompt him to continue, which was not particularly unexpected. He was still glad of it.

"I . . . suppose the reason I didn't is because I _was_ good at my job. Even when I was just supposed to be processing and mining the data, part of my brain was always analysing it, trying to find a more efficient way through it. I was just trying to do my work well. Over time, though . . . I did the maths." Harvan licked his lips, remembering long nights tossing and turning in his bed as his mind worked double time through reams of data soaked up during the day. "All the information was available and flowing through Bideran. We were the heart of the bureaucracy, feeding directly to Coruscant. The computers and storage systems took up hundreds of square kilometres. I had access to the figures as part of my job. I did not once step outside my privileges and restrictions. All I had to do was put it together . . ." He closed his eyes. Breathed. Opened them again. "I worked out exactly how many people the Empire killed, imprisoned and displaced on a daily basis. Per ship. Per city. Per planet. Per system. Per territory. The plain cost of what it was doing." He attempted a shrug. "Two weeks before Alderaan was destroyed, I took passage off-world and joined a rebel cell on Stellas Major."

"So easily?" The phrasing of the question spoke of surprise even if the tone in which it was asked did not.

"Before the Death Star was destroyed, at the height of the Empire's power? Yes. No one was paying me any attention. Why would they? I was an insignificant part of the Imperial system, who'd never bothered anyone or raised any alarms. If I had tried it a couple of weeks later, I wouldn't have managed it. But by then it was too late and I was sharing the census data I'd copied with the Stellas rebels."

"You betrayed the Empire because of numbers?" There was incredulity in Vader's voice now. An edge of honest disbelief.

"Because of what the numbers meant."

"You were not concerned that your family and friends would suffer for your actions?"

"They did not exist to suffer. Not until I joined the Alliance."

"We are very different, Mr Sahtou" Vader concluded after a long silence, with no obvious sign of irony. He absently brushed at the one of his suit's control boxes, gaze resting on the concealed screen in the wall. "My reasons were never so abstract. I thought only of protecting what I cared about. Protecting what I . . . loved." A faint shudder ran through Vader's body. "Perhaps you cannot understand how strong that desire can be." An off-hand judgement based on a two-minute story. Harvan would have been mildly offended were it anyone else. "I believed that the Emperor's power and the order he was going to bring were necessary to safeguard my family."

A sigh reverberated beneath Vader's breathing. "But the Emperor's power served only the Emperor. What you saw clearly in those numbers, I did not see until I had destroyed everything I cared about. Even my ability to take revenge on those I thought responsible. Everything I feared came about by my own hand. And by the time I understood that, service to the Empire was the only thing I had left."


	24. Chapter 24

The familiar thump of the airlock seal and Harvan's shuttle was once again latched on to the prison ship. He did not expect to hear that many more times.

His datapad lay in his lap, notes staring up at him, read so often the words were starting to lose meaning. His lists of questions were dwindling to single figures. Even his calls on the Alliance databases were starting to trail off. Soon he would be finishing up his report to the leadership and preparing to brief General Madine for the inevitable debate.

Soon he would be free.

It was very hard not to think of it in those terms. Soon Harvan would be able to leave behind the bare, dark room and the insistent hissing that filled it for good. Soon he would no longer have to spend his days trapped in a confined space with a dark lord. The thought buoyed his mood considerably.

Still, he was not done yet. He clambered his way through the airlock and greeted Sergeant Disris on the other side. She nodded but for a second just stared past him, as though expecting someone else to come out of the shuttle.

"Is everything all right?"

"There's no one else in there, is there?"

"Just the pilot. Why? What's wrong?"

Disris lifted her shoulders in a motion that was far too tense to be a shrug. "We're getting an odd mass reading from the shuttle. I was hoping it was just an extra body but if not . . ."

Harvan automatically took another step away from the airlock. "Do you want us to leave?"

She looked at a readout strapped to her wrist. "You're here and we're still seeing more mass than we should be. I don't really want to have to send Ban-Mas back out with a bomb aboard but if we need to – there you are."

The Deveronian corporal came jogging into the room with a trio of astromechs at his back. With a few sharply barked orders, he sent them on into the shuttle, their sensors bristling. "No energy signature we can pick up," the corporal grunted to Disris, scratching the base of his left horn, "Assume that's a good sign."

"Unless it's a decay charge." She tapped her readout again, then said to Harvan, "Let's get you down to the cell. There's not a lot you can do here."

"Shouldn't we get Ban-Mas off?" Not that that would make much difference if it was a large enough bomb.

"Captain already asked. She told him she was staying right there in case it really is a bomb and she needs to do a snap launch to get it away from us. Come on."

Reluctantly, Harvan followed her, leaving the corporal to stand anxious guard and wait for the astromechs' verdict.

"Any theories on what it could be?" he asked as they made their way down to the cell deck, "Assuming it's not an explosive."

"You can't see how anyone would get a bomb on board either, huh?"

"I'm sure it's possible. But given the amount of ambient chemical scanners on the flagship, I admit it seems less likely than an inert piece of technology."

Disris screwed up her nose. "We've had professional smugglers set us up a defector system that makes this ship damn near impossible to track unless we switch it off. Sticking a homing beacon to the side would be the easiest way around that."

"How would something like that be triggered?"

"Could be any one of a dozen ways. I'd tie it into the engine heat-sinks if I had to set it up."

"Whatever the case, I imagine the longer something like that goes undetected, the greater the risk of it activating."

"Yeah. Great, isn't it?"

They walked on in anxious silence, Disris compulsively checking her readout every few metres. Harvan ran a finger under his tunic collar, wondering whether he would be able to concentrate on his job at all. Bad enough to have to focus past the associations of Vader's presence without having to worry about being blown out of space while he worked.

Disris was barely paying him any attention by the time they reached the cell. She operated the door on reflex, her eyes glued to her wrist. Harvan left her frowning at the little screen and did his best to focus on the task at hand. There was nothing else he could do and no way to help the situation by not doing his job.

The inner door slid open. Vader's gaze rose to greet him. "Mr Sahtou."

And then all hell broke loose.


	25. Chapter 25

The deck lurched sharply. A wave of vertigo struck Harvan. They were falling, weightless, senseless. The rush of being pulled into hyperspace, amplified and going in completely the wrong direction.

As abruptly as it started, it was over. Harvan felt himself slam back into normality, his feet thumping against the floor as he stumbled. A desperate grab at the doorway was all that saved him. Vader was half out of his chair, helmet swinging from side to side. An alarm blared dully through the bulkhead. The lights flickered once, twice.

"What is happening?" Vader demanded, rising to his full height.

"I d-don't know." Harvan hesitated. The ship shuddered under him. That decided the matter. "I'm going to find out."

"Wait. Mr Sahtou –"

Too late. The anteroom door closed across the sight of Vader's outstretching hand. Harven whirled and pressed against the outer door. Hoping that Disris would see the indicator and trigger the release. After a longer pause than he would have liked, she did.

"– _caught us in a scoop-jump. Fried the hyperspace motivator and half the thrust regulators. We're drifting and they're coming around for the kill."_ The captain's voice, coming over Disris' wrist-comm.

"Sergeant –" Harvan began.

" _Is that Sahtou?"_

"Yes sir." Disris angled the comm towards him.

" _Sahtou, we don't have long so I need a straight answer: is it safe to move the prisoner?"_

His chest constricted. The captain was asking him as the one person on the ship who had actually spent time talking to Vader and assessing his condition. He knew that and knew too that it was a responsibility far above his position. But really, who else was she supposed to go to for an instant opinion?

"I . . . I believe so, sir." Because Vader cared too much about his son to betray the trust Commander Skywalker had placed in him.

A harsh sigh hissed across the channel. _"Right. I'm going to unseal the cell. Emergency protocols. Get Vader to the shuttle and get him off my ship. The fleet will have seen we've gone –"_

"Captain!" Disris sounded practically scandalised by the instruction. "We can't –"

" _Sergeant, we have another corvette bearing down on us, one that is significantly better armed than this one and it's pretty damn obvious what they're after so you will get their target off the ship and safely into the Admiral's custody before we lose the best hope we've got of learning all the Emperor's secrets and you will do it_ right this minute _. Am I clear?"_

"Yessir."

" _Then get on with it. Screev, angle the deflectors – and comm, keep trying to punch through to –"_ The channel went dead.

Disris snarled. Behind them, they heard the locks on the inner door deactivate. Her knuckles were white around the edges of the control disc. Harvan watched her, not daring to try swaying her decision. The whoop of the alarm changed pitch, deepening to a battle-stations alert.

The sergeant the disc against the door release. Darth Vader towered in the doorway, the bright light of the antechamber gleaming off the few undamaged parts of his armour. "What," he asked, voice thick with barely suppressed menace, "is going on?"

"We're under attack," Disris told him sharply, hand already on the blaster at her hip, "The captain has ordered me to get you to the shuttle as quickly as possible. Is that going to be a problem?" She spat the question with defiance, chin raised. Harvan saw her hands tremble.

Vader regarded her for a second, looked at Harvan for a second more. "No. Lead the way."

They set off at a run – or at least Harvan and Disris did. Vader's stride was long enough that he was able to keep pace with them without needing to rise beyond a steady jog. Even so, Harvan wondered how difficult it was for him to move about after weeks of enforced stillness. Were the snatches of breathing he caught over the still-blaring alarms becoming more ragged? It was hard to tell with the pounding of blood in his own ears to contend with as well.

The first shots hit the ship as they reached the access ladder, just a couple of distant thuds to begin with. Then a third impact, closer and louder. Then an almighty, wrenching bang right on top of them. The ship pitched and threw them hard against the sides of the corridor. Half the lights cut out, closely followed by the alarms. Ripping metal and rushing air screamed down the ladder, cut off abruptly by slamming clangs. The whining pulse of the ship's turbolasers reverberated through the tortured superstructure.

Then – stillness and the stink of burning plastic.

Harvan dragged himself to his feet. Disris and Vader were already up, the sergeant running to the ladder, Vader resting his shoulder against the bulkhead. In the silence, his respirator sounded loud and harsh. Disris started to climb.

"Are you sure it's safe?" Harvan asked, wincing as he heard his voice quaver.

"No. Need to find out."

She got a dozen rungs up before giving a sharp cry and dropping down again, closely followed by the flailing, smoke-blackened form of the Deveronian corporal. "Kriffing hell! Jenz!"

The corporal collapsed to his knees, coughing violently. There were a dozen long gashes through the back of his tunic. "Airlock's gone," he gasped, "Some schutta hit it clean through! Blew the kriffing shuttle out into space!"

"Ban-Mas?"

"No idea! Is it Impies?" Jenz chose that moment to look up and caught sight of Vader. "Druk!" He was upright in seconds, backing up and jarring his horns on the ladder behind him.

"Captain said it was a corvette. Don't know anything else. Ordered us to get the prisoner off-ship."

"Y-you – you're kidding, right? No kriffing way are we getting to that shuttle now, if it's even –"

Another thump, less jarring than before, cut him off. Harvan recognised the sound of another ship latching on and found confirmation in Disris' rapidly whitening face. "Druk."

"I presume that the attacking ship has docked," Vader intoned, making Jenz flinch back that little bit further.

"Sure sounds like it. Druk, druk, druk. OK. Escape pods." She jerked a thumb at the continuing curve of the corridor. "If they're docked on the other side, they'll have us between their guns and the port escape pods. We'll get out that way."

"Are you joking?" Jenz' eyes went wide and wild. "Sarge, we won't stand a floppit's chance in a meat factory! And help _him_ escape? You _gotta_ be joking!"

Disris rounded on him. He was a good ten centimetres taller but he still quailed under her glare. "We are going to obey the captain's orders and do our duty and not let our prisoner be taken by the enemy or killed on our watch. Got that, corporal?"

Dumbly, Jenz nodded.

"Right. Mr Harvan. You any good with a blaster?"

"I . . . adequate, sergeant."

"It'll do. Here." She pulled a hold-out blast from a holster on the back of her belt and thrust it into his hands. "Now let's move it!"


	26. Chapter 26

They made it to the escape pod access point but no further. Blaster bolts singed the air right in front of them, driving them away from the hatches. The first shots went wide, the armoured figures boiling into the passageway firing as they came, not waiting for a clear line of sight. Disris managed to shoot back, Jenz too after a couple of heartbeats, but they were both thrown and on the defensive and the attackers quickly formed up into more disciplined ranks. A hail of light poured towards them, seeking Vader's unmistakable form, heedless of anyone else who happened to be in the way.

"Into the service duct!" Disris shouted over the whine of blasters, scoring a direct hit on a white helmet, downing one among too many.

Harvan fired his own gun, knowing he would not be so lucky, and dived for the opening. Jenz was hard on his heels, Disris covering him and Vader –

Vader was deliberately hanging just behind the sergeant, hands raised, palms out towards the oncoming fire and while it might have been Harvan's eyes struggling against flash-blindness, he was fairly certain that the rushing plasma was _bending_ around the gesture. Just enough so send the shots wide. Just enough to cover their backs until they were in among the pipes and partitions of the service tunnel. The great armoured shoulders dropped noticeably the instant they were clear.

"Back! Keep going!" Waving them on, Disris kept her blaster levelled at the opening on to the corridor and backed up a few metres. She signalled Jenz to take up a position behind one of the partitions.

His face twisted as he obeyed. "What are we _doing_? Those are rebel troops out there! We're firing on our own kriffing people – for _him_!"

Whatever reply she might have made, it was lost as the first of the boarders appeared in the opening, blaster raised. Disris got in a shot that impacted on his side, then had to duck as three more armoured men sprang into view.

Harvan braced himself in the shadow of one of the partitions, heart pounding, skin prickling with static and sweat. Blaster bolts whizzed past, close enough to feel the heat. Vader was opposite him, breathing harder than ever. Harvan could practically see the man sagging within the ever-statuesque armour, the exertion exacting its toll.

Disris retreated between them, firing constantly, taking a new position further down the passage.

"This is insane!" Jenz bellowed after her.

Vader's fists tightened. He heaved himself from cover, pivoting out into the open. Shots glanced off his elbow and his pauldron. He threw out an arm, hand open, then curling closed. To throttle his would-be murderers, Harvan wondered in that split-second, to bring the might of the Force to bear on his enemies?

No. A blast door slammed shut in front of Jenz, eliciting a violent curse. Their attackers were cut off. They were safe. For however long it took to break through or go around. Not long.

Disris lowered her gun fractionally. "We need a better position. The old conference chamber, maybe. That's pretty well defended." She scowled at Vader, whose fatigue was now even more pronounced. "Can you make it?"

"Yes. We should hurry." No admission of weakness. No acknowledgement of the smouldering damage to the armour's sleeve. Of course not.

"I'll lead. Jenz, rear guard. Mr Sahtou, cover the middle. This way."

Pounding feet chased them through the ship, the echo of their own boots mingled with those of the converging troops. Twice they narrowly avoided being incinerated at intersections. Three times, Vader triggered blast doors to shield them. Harvan's hands burned with the effort of using his gun, the little hold-out pistol growing hot and cumbersome in his too-tight grip. Narrow corridors forced them to press closer to one another. Every so often, he would brush against Vader's arm or Jenz's back. The one like padded iron. The other quivering, wet with blood.

Snatches of supposition whirled through his mind in between the sheer terror and throat-tightening panic. They were being attacked by other rebels, well armed, soldiers. Someone in the fleet beyond the trusted few had found out. That was obvious. Something on the shuttle to enable tracking of the prison ship and the hyperspace capture. A raiding party, an armed corvette. This was everything Madine and the others had feared. Why they had kept Vader's presence a secret.

The Alliance, turned on itself by the thirst for vengeance.

They took the last few metres to the conference room at as much of a flat out run as they could manage, Disris clutching a burn on her gun arm, Harvan supporting Jenz and trying to cover them both at the same time, Vader wheezing raggedly. The troopers were hard on their heels and the door began to ring with impacts bare seconds after they had sealed it shut.

It was clearly a long time since any diplomacy had gone on in the chamber. The walls were stacked with boxes of supplies and spare parts, the long oblong conference table scratched and pitted with years of carelessness. Another door stood open at the far end, at least until Disris made a dash for the wall controls. Pounding her fist on the emergency button brought heavy shutters down across the entrances, muffling the blaster-fire. They were as protected as they would get.

Harvan helped Jenz across to the table, letting him lean against that for support instead. His hands came away sticky and purple with the Deveronian's blood. The corporal offered him a humourless smirk. "And I thought my days bleeding because of the Empire were done."

"Bridge, can you hear me?" Disris was thumbing the comm panel repeatedly, to little success. "Come in! Captain? Mr Tivo! Druk." She thumped the wall angrily. "They must have fried the connections."

The gunfire stopped. All four of them held their breath in the silence that followed, ears straining to hear the ship's every creak and groan. Harvan saw Vader's head turning to and fro and wondered whether the helmet was giving him any insight into what was going on outside.

"So what do we do now?" Jenz asked, throwing his blaster down on the table so he could tentatively probe his injuries.

"We wait. The fleet _must_ have seen what happened by now. They'll be coming for us. Those doors are heavy grade armour and this room's got its own life support. We can hole up here until –"

"No. No, sorry sarge, no." He looked over at her, teeth bared. "There's no kriffing way they don't get through those doors before help gets here and there is _no. Kriffing. Way._ I am dying for _that monster_!" He jabbed an accusing finger at Vader, shaking with pain and fury. "I say we hand him over right now. Come on, sarge! Don't tell me you're not thinking the same thing!"

"We have our _orders_ , corporal!"

"I don't care if the Princess came down here in her skivies and begged you to protect him for the sake of the Rebellion and all the little fishes! I'm not going to die for no kriffing Imperial and I'm kriffing well not going to die for _Darth kriffing Vader_!"

Harvan tuned the argument out as best he could and moved closer to Vader, frowning up at the man in the armour. The respirator was still sounding far from healthy and he could see tremors passing down the black-clad limbs. "Are you all right?" he asked, the context for once making the question sane.

"Better question!" Jenz shouted, "Who gives a –"

Vader stiffened, his entire frame going rigid. "Move," he commanded, thrusting Harvan aside. Jenz stumbled away from the table, snatching at his gun. The dark lord reached out with empty hands, fingers spread. A fearful grinding noise filled the room, then the whole table juddered towards Vader, scraping the floor, lifting free. It heaved into the air, the far end pitching up and over. Like some demonic conductor, Vader directed its cartwheel and brought it crashing on to its side, top-face against the doorway. His whole body shook with exertion, as though he were moving the thing with his own muscles rather than his mind. The assured poise of the Emperor's Fist deserted him completely and he staggered, clutching at the wall for support. "All . . . of . . . you . . . back!"

Disris' stare flicked from the table to Vader then back again. "Do as he says!" She started for the other end of the room.

Jenz just looked bewildered. "Wh – what the –"

Harvan, quite automatically, stepped towards Vader, intending to get a shoulder under his arm and help him obey his own command.

The world went white and filled with thunder.


	27. Chapter 27

Harvan's vision cleared before his hearing came back. The world was tilted and the echo of the blast rang numbly in the hollow of his ears. He was lying on his side, body at a weird, uncomfortable angle. Something was pooling, hot and liquid under his fingers. Lifting his hand unsteadily into his line of sight, he realised it was blood. It took him far too long to make the further connection to a stinging gash in his leg, probably the result of a fragment of the table, which now lay in three blackened pieces and a scattering of shrapnel.

Blurred shapes resolved into people standing among the ruins. Rebel troopers. The attackers, about eight or nine of them, blasters held at the ready. Harvan could not see Disris or Jenz. Presumably they were still behind him, presumably too they were being covered by some of those blasters. And Vader –

Vader was in the middle of the room, a couple of metres at most from where the blast had thrown Harvan. His robes hung in tatters and fresh scorch marks joined the fading burns across the sides of his helmet. He was holding his left arm across his chest, as if his grip were actually keeping the armoured panels in place. The first thing Harvan heard above the slowly fading ringing was the new rattle coming from deep within the respirator, a disturbingly wet noise that spoke of injuries far deeper than cosmetic damage.

Yet still the man was on his feet. Still facing his enemies, though whether with defiance or resignation was impossible to tell.

A hand landed on Harvan's arm as he started to shift to get a better look at what was going on. "Don't move," Disris hissed in his ear. A moment later, dull pain and nausea caught up with him, rising through his body from his leg and from the small of his back. Clearly his injuries were also deeper than just a scratch.

Someone was talking, loud, angry. One of the troopers, his helmet cast aside, his gun swinging about as he stalked around the circle of clear space between Vader and the other soldiers, punctuating his words with cutting motions. "You got nothing to say, huh?" he demanded, "Not going to bother saying anything to us? Thought we'd just let you live 'cause you told command all your secrets? Well I got news for you – over my dead body. Over _all_ our dead bodies."

"Kraver," one of the others broke in, "Stop wasting time." She sounded nervous.

"Oh come on, Sall! Don't tell me you're not enjoying this. Seeing _him_ be the one trapped with a load of blasters in his face."

"We don't have time." The woman jerked her head. "Castin says they just got buzzed by a Y-Wing. The fleet's not going to be far behind. Finish this, skrag the witnesses and let's go."

"Kill me," Vader intoned, breaking his silence suddenly enough to cause almost every soldier present to tense and twitch, "But these people are your comrades. Leave them. Their deaths will not gain you anything."

Even through a haze of pain, Harvan knew that was the wrong thing to say. He felt Disris' hand tighten. Surprise, probably, to hear the dark lord defending them. Unlike the physical act of using the Force to deflect harm, this could not be as easily interpreted as a selfish desire for survival.

Kraver bristled, stepped forward. "Anyone who defends _you_ is the enemy!" He levelled his gun at Vader's head. "Anyone who keeps you alive for a _second_ longer than it takes to pull a trigger is not a true rebel."

He would have fired. He was in the _instant_ of firing when a thick blob of molten metal dropped to the deck in front of him.

Kraver froze, an almost comedic expression of astonishment replacing the anger on his face. His eyes flicked downward to the rapidly cooling splotch at his feet, then tracked back up to the source –

He leaped backwards as a rough disc of ceiling came crashing down, propelled by the slight weight of Commander Luke Skywalker.

The Jedi landed lightly and sprang forward, lightsaber blazing. He was dressed in a flight suit, vacuum seals dangling from his wrists and neck. With his hair flying and his sword of green light, he was about the most heroic sight Harvan had ever seen in his life.

Kraver's gun went off, though it was hard to tell if that was intentional or not. Skywalker brought his blade neatly into the path of the bolt, swatting it harmlessly against the bulkhead. Immediately the rest of the troopers opened fire, peppering Skywalker with blaster fire. The young man became a blur of motion, lightsaber singing as it spun arcs around his body. Not a single one of the shots hit home. They were scattered around the chamber, reflected into walls, floor and ceiling in a storm of noise and sizzling energy. At one point, Harvan was sure he felt the entire room shaking with the ferocity of it. A couple of Kraver's people cried out and went down clutching at burnt limbs. Their leader recovered from his initial shock enough to add his own fire-power to the mix, to no obvious use.

"Cease fire!" he called after a couple of minutes, shouting to be heard over the din, "Cease fire!"

One by one, the troopers heeded his order, leaving Skywalker, still in a defensive stance, in the middle of a rough arc of buckled, blacked decking. Somehow, he was not breathing hard in the slightest, though Harvan could see the sheen of perspiration across his face. Vader stood behind him, eternally impassive.

Kraver spoke through gritted teeth. "Get out of the way, Commander. Or I swear, we will keep shooting 'til that fancy nerf-sticker of yours runs out of power."

"No," Skywalker said calmly, lifting his sword a fraction, "I am staying right here."

"Luke . . ." Vader began, reaching a hand to his son's shoulder.

"Commander . . ." The woman who had spoken before, Sall, lowered her blaster. "Please Commander. I know you think you're doing the right thing but you don't owe this _thing_ anything! Just get out of the way – we'll let the others go."

"The hell we will!" Kraver snapped. His hand went to his belt. Tugged off a stubby grey cylinder. "Get out of the way right now or I swear, I will blow this entire deck out into space."

Sharp intakes of breath ran around the room. The colour drained from Sall's face. Commander Skywalker did not give a millimetre of ground. His mouth flattened into a line. Kraver's thumb found the grenade's trigger. Vader was a statue again. "Sir, please," Sall whispered.

"That's enough!"

The words rang through the air as sharp and cutting as another detonation. As one, everyone present turned to face the doorway. Princess Leia Organa stood flanked by General Solo on one side and Chewbacca on the other, a tiny figure by comparison, dressed in a simple white clothes, no badge or insignia, only a couple of command cylinders and a silver clasp. But she dominated the situation in an instant. Seasoned, desperate or flat-out murderous as they were, each trooper wilted a little under the heat of her glare.

"Major Kraver." She stepped into the room, deliberately not paying any attention to the number of weapons on display. "We have your ship surrounded and there is a full battalion of commandos right behind me. This has gone quite far enough." Marching right up to Kraver, she held out her hand. "Stand. Down."

General Solo's eyes went wide. Chewbacca hefted his massive bowcaster with a low growl. Behind them, the thud of boots on metal echoed once more through the ship's hallways.

Kraver stared down at the Princess, grenade still raised. His eyes darted about, calculating, assessing, an edge of panic setting in. One of the troopers dropped his gun. Another followed suit. The thudding got closer and closer. The Princess' gaze did not waver.

The major dropped the grenade into her hand and, with a snarl, threw his blaster away. General Solo almost managed to hide his sigh of relief and made a flicking motion with his free hand. "Come on, guys. It's over."

Commander Skywalker watched the troopers disarm themselves then switched off his lightsaber. The Princess gave them a cool once-over glance and turned away, still holding the grenade. More Alliance soldiers poured in through the door, these wearing the emblem of Madine's commandos.

And as they set about cuffing Kraver's troops, as the tension finally evaporated, a wave of nausea and light-headedness overtook Harven entirely. All the agony he had been holding at bay came crashing in at once and he felt everything start to spin.

The last thing he saw before consciousness fell away was Vader folding into his son's supporting arms, eyes locked on his daughter's departing back.


	28. Chapter 28

Harvan learned the full details slowly from his infirmary bed. Medics and visitors told the story out of order, in fits and starts. He heard about Commander Skywalker running out of a briefing with Rogue Squadron and taking the first starfighter he could find, answering some unheard summons from across empty space. He learnt how Ban-Mass, working desperately aboard the stricken shuttle, had managed to send a location signal back to the _Home-One_. He was told the names of the two officers aboard the prison ship who had been killed during the attack.

Kraver and his squad, together with the command crew of the attack corvette, were placed very firmly under arrest and were being kept safely away from the main bulk of the fleet. Opinion was severely divided on what to do with them. They would face a court martial at the very least.

Corporal Jenz's injuries were severe enough to warrant a trip to the medical frigate. Disris, briefly visiting a couple of days after the disaster, seemed confident he would make a full recovery. She sat next to Harvan's bed for a few minutes, fiddling with the skin-regeneration patch strapped to her arm and muttering darkly about what she wanted to do to those responsible. Of all of them, she seemed to have escaped with the least harm but that only seemed to increase her anger.

The root cause of the mess turned out to be a droid. The way General Madine described it, on an equally brief visit, it had leaked the existence of the prison ship as simple revenge for Vader killing its master. Ironic, given the effort that had been put into background checks on the organic personal trusted with the secret – no one had thought to check the mechanicals. A single astromech, gone far too long without a memory wipe, so attached to its former owner that it would openly defy its programmed function and betray those it had been assigned to serve – that had gone completely undetected. Madine was quietly on the war-path over the lapse.

Ultimately though, there was only one issue that mattered.

[I can't believe you were in on it,] Zun marvelled, nibbling on a ration bar, [Keeping something that big under wraps!]

The news of Vader's capture spread as wildfire through the fleet, disbelief and anger keeping pace with it in equal measure. If Kraver's actions alone had not blown the secret wide open, bringing Vader to the medical frigate certainly did. The extent of the damage to his armour necessitated the grudging attention of the Alliance's best doctors and hiding their involvement would have been impossible.

Already, the heated arguments were beginning to spill from mess-hall to wardroom, from corridor to command deck, from ship to ship.

[Should have just let him be blown to dust with the rest.] The Sulustrian shook his head in disbelief. [This is crazy. Just crazy.]

It was hard to disagree. Even from the relative isolation of _Home-One_ 's medical bay, Harvan overheard enough tirades and conspiracy theories to know how much the news had strained trust in the Alliance leadership. Open mutiny was the extreme end of the scale but there were numerous lesser ways in which that strain would show through. And that was just within the fleet. The Alliance's legitimacy depended on the support of a great many worlds who had plenty of reason to despise Vader and find his continued existence abhorrent. The future of a restored Republic could stand or fall on the fate of one man.

The unfortunate truth was that if the dark lord had died aboard the Death Star, life would have been easier for everyone.

[Don't suppose you can tell me what they plan to do with him now, huh?]

Harvan shrugged, wincing at the twinge in his side the movement evoked. "Sorry," he told his friend, "Right now, I'm not sure they know any better than you or I do."


	29. Chapter 29

"Mr Sahtou? May I come in?"

As startled as he was to hear Commander Skywalker's voice, Harvan was slow to react. His body still ached from the treatments and it moved stiffly. It took him a good few seconds to straighten from stowing his kit-bag under his bunk and turn to face the open doorway. "Ah. Sorry – yes of course, sir."

Skywalker smiled as he stepped over the threshold, his eyes flicking about the cabin. There was not much to see. It was just another rounded box into which a bunk, a desk, a locker and a chair had been inartistically crammed. There were hundreds like it ranged around the flagship's mid-level curve, all packed with low-ranking officers and those among the Alliance who were more civilians than soldiers.

"Sorry to interrupt," Skywalker said, gaze settling briefly on the datacards strewn over the desk before finding Harvan's face again, "I hoped I could speak to you for a minute."

"You're not interrupting." Harvan leant back against the bulkhead, trying to ease the discomfort in his leg. "I was just trying to find something. Nothing important. What can I do for you, Commander?"

"Actually, I simply came down here to thank you."

"Oh."

Taken aback, Harvan was not sure how to respond. "I did very little to defend your father, Commander," he managed eventually, "Really, you have little to thank me for."

"Even if that were the case, you're probably the only person I _can_ thank without getting my nose broken." There was a deeper sadness behind the joke. "And it feels wrong not to thank _someone_. The fact that anyone defended my father . . . so thank you, Mr Sahtou."

"In that case, thank _you_ Commander. You saved all our lives."

Skywalker lifted his eyebrows momentarily in self-deprecating expression. "I'm not quite sure what I would have done if Leia hadn't arrived."

A couple of seconds passed that neither man found words to fill. Harvan tried to square the resolute warrior from the prison ship with the gentle-spoken man before him. Battle changed people, one way or the other. It was hard not to wonder what it was like for a Jedi, to face many opponents willingly, without fear, and hold them off without malice or blood-lust.

"Your father . . . is he . . . ?" It was hard to know how to end the question.

"He's recovering." The answer was firm but neutral. "The doctors have had to reroute some of his armour's systems to repair the damage. They actually think that may have helped with its function because it's meant replacing some of the older components. Although . . ." Skywalker breathed out, not quite sighing. "You realise he can't be saved, don't you?"

Harvan nodded his understanding. And he had a high enough of an opinion of the Commander not to have expected him to be deluding himself either. "Do they know how long he's likely to live?"

"Not a figure they can agree on. Certainly not more than a handful of years. Probably less. It's funny. When I decided I had to save him, it was with this idea that I might get my father back. The good man he once was. I don't think I ever stopped to consider that . . ." He trailed off and frowned down at his hands. "That it could never be that simple."

His discomfort was obvious. Harvan could already hear the awkward excuses and farewells that would follow.

"Commander," he said before Skywalker could voice them, "May I ask a question?"

"I'm starting to think questions are your weapon of choice, Mr Sahtou." But the smile came back anyway. "Of course."

"Why did you believe your father could be, ah, saved as you put it?"

The Jedi half-closed his eyes in thought. "If I were half the person the Alliance's propagandists have been making me out to be, I would probably have known the moment I found out who he was. But . . . I guess it took me a bit longer than that. I didn't want to believe him when he told me and I was in so much pain from having failed Han and been so thoroughly defeated . . . it was only when that passed and I started to actually think through what had happened that I realised . . . you know what Vader was capable of, right? You've even seen some of it. Now imagine him at full strength, at the height of his powers. I had a few months of proper training with my teacher by that point. There was no way I could ever have beaten him but I shouldn't have been able to escape from him either. Even in death. He could have pulled me out of that pit if he'd reacted quick enough. _But he didn't_. I surprised him. He didn't expect me to chose death over him and everything he did during the fight was to capture me without killing me. He wanted me alive. He expected me to join him. And the only reason I could come up with for that was that in some distorted, twisted way, he cared about what happened to me and wanted me at his side."

"It could simply have been what the Emperor commanded," Harvan pointed out, automatically seeking the contrary position.

"Perhaps. But then why say we could overthrow the Emperor together? No, he really did feel some kind of . . . shadow of love for me. And I realised that if that was still there, there was a way back for him. He just needed someone to make the effort to show him."

"You believed. It was a matter of faith, I mean."

"I suppose so. It was a very lonely faith though. Even my teachers didn't think he could be saved. They out-right told me if I couldn't bring myself to kill him, the Emperor would win. The funny thing is, that made me determined to try. Anything else just felt . . . wrong. The easy way out. I think they'd fixed the idea of Vader in their minds and never questioned why he'd done the things he had. Going to the dark side killed Anakin Skywalker for them and they didn't ask why."

"They weren't the only ones to think that way. They still aren't."

"I know." Skywalker pinched his lip between finger and thumb. "I wish . . . I wish I could show them _something_. The Alliance I mean. I know nothing can set things right but if I can just show them something of the man he truly is. Help them understand . . ."

He blinked and rolled his shoulders. "I'm sorry. You have already expressed your position in all this. I'm not trying to convince you or influence you're opinion. I just . . ." Spreading his hands helplessly, he pulled a face. "That's why I acted the way I did, even if it doesn't make sense."

"It makes a great deal of sense," Harvan said slowly, hauling his protesting body away from the bulkhead and over to the desk. His rested a hand over one of the datapads. "Or at least, no less sense than a lot of the reasoning I've heard before. I . . . I would like to give you something, Commander. I think perhaps you need to hear it."

Moving his hand back, he tapped the pad and triggered a particular file. "My recorder activated at some point during our escape. I only found out today when I was going through my effects here. There's no picture – well, there is, but it's mainly of the inside of my jacket. But, ah . . ." He pressed play.

" _Castin says they just got buzzed by a Y-Wing."_ The trooper Sall's voice, distant and distorted but audible. _"The fleet's not going to be far behind. Finish this, skrag the witnesses and let's go."_

Then, louder, closer: _"Kill me But these people are your comrades. Leave them. Their deaths will not gain you anything."_

Harvan watched Commander Skywalker's face as he listened to his father's defiance and saw in the younger man's expression a fleeting glimpse of faith, rewarded.


	30. Chapter 30

"Through here. Just go in. They're expecting you." The lieutenant indicated the door with a flicked appendage. Their light tone did not do much to ease Harvan's nerves or calm his stomach. Checking for the twentieth time that his uniform was straight, he stepped into the council chamber.

It was not a particularly impressive or intimidating room. Unlike, for example, _Home-One_ 's main command centre, it was built to allow a modest handful of people to hold important discussions in absolute privacy. In many respects, it was a smaller version of the conference room on the prison ship.

The people sitting around the table were another matter entirely. General Madine was there, a reassuringly familiar face though set in the grimmest of lines. Airen Cracken, seated next to him, looked just as miserable as he pushed one hand through his greying hair and scowled at the display screen in front of him. A trim, gold-furred Bothan was murmuring in his ear, turning a stylus compulsively over in her hands. Aila Tres'fa, second-in-command for the whole Bothan intelligence network. On Madine's other side, General Rieekan rubbed his temples and squeezed his eyes shut as if against a headache. Two seats on, Admiral Ackbar sat with his hands half-folded in a gesture of irritated impatience. His great eyes swivelled in a sideways look at the twi'lek fighter commander on his left as she tapped at something on her display.

Mon Mothma sat in the middle of the row, composed and calm as always, her finger tips pressed lightly together. Leia Organa on her right, Mat Temedia of the Ryloth resistance movement on her left. Next to him was Orrimaarko, the perpetually sour-faced dresselian looking even angrier than usual, and next to him was Lady Neluian of Sullust, dressed in the full regalia of her rank as ambassador to the Alliance. The rest of the chairs in the arc were given over to various other representatives, of whom Harvan caught only the most fleeting of impressions before Mon Mothma acknowledged his arrival.

"Mr Sahtou. Thank you for joining us." Her quiet welcome cut across the half-dozen murmured conversations going on around her and focused all eyes on Harvan, who came to attention and bowed.

"Please, be seated." She waved him to one of the three chairs set up on the near-side of the table. He sat, all too aware of the scrutiny he was now under. Mon Mothma left a few moments for the table to come to order then went on, "We would first like to extend our thanks to you for the work you have undertaken and the report you have produced for us. We appreciate the challenge you have faced working in isolation on such a delicate task and your diligence and thoroughness are much to be admired."

From a lesser orator, that might have easily become trite flattery but Mon Mothma always spoke with such quiet sincerity that it was impossible to take the sentiment as anything but honest. Harvan felt a slight warmth rising around his collar, the result of natural embarrassment at being praised by the heart and soul of the Rebellion.

"While we have all read your report closely," she went on, "we wanted to speak to you personally to give you the chance to highlight anything that you feel is particularly worthy of note and to give those present here the chance to put any questions they may have directly to you." Her brow furrowed, just a little. "Despite the contentious nature of the issue at hand, I would encourage you to be as candid as possible in your answers to those questions. If we are to decide Darth Vader's fate, then we must consider every point of view on the issue that is put to us."

Several members of the council stirred in their seats at that. Given that Commander Skywalker had been in to see them several hours before, Harvan could make an educated guess about the source of their disquiet. Mon Mothma waited for those around her to settle down before concluding, "With that in mind, is there anything you would like to add to your report?"

Harvan laid his hands on the table before him, one over the other. "I have very little to add, ma'am," he began slowly, "except to say that I stand by everything I stated in my report. It is my opinion, having cross-referenced the testimony I was given to the best of my ability, that Darth Vader has made and will make no attempt to conceal his part in the Empire's crimes. The only issues in which he was not completely frank in the first instance were those that touched on his reasons for joining the Emperor and those that concerned Commander Skywalker and –" He was unable to stop his eyes flicking in her direction. "– Princess Organa. And even with those, I was able to draw him on the relevant information, as you will have read. That, ah, that is all I would like to say."

"Thank you, Mr Sahtou," Mon Mothma acknowledged before glancing from one side to the other. "Gentlebeings?"

"Mr Sahtou." General Rieekan jumped in the split-second after the invitation left her mouth. He tapped his display with a couple of fingers. "While I've got to say all this makes much more sense to me than being told that Vader's just a misunderstood guy who's still good at heart, can you tell me what makes you qualified to make psychological assessments of the man? You've noted your observations on his apparent state of mind a few times here but as far as I know, you're not a qualified psychologist, are you?"

"Ah, no sir. I am primarily a data analyst. I have assisted with prisoner debriefings before but I have no formal training as an interrogator."

"If I might interject." Madine glanced at Rieekan. "Mr Sahtou has worked as part of my staff for three years and I can vouch for his insight and attention to detail. I trust his ability to read people."

"And I wasn't going to imply otherwise," the older General retorted gruffly, "I was just going to ask if it wouldn't be appropriate to get a more formal assessment of Vader. I'm willing to believe he's told what he thinks is the truth – not sure I trust his judgement on that."

"Surely the point in all this is that his judgement _is_ compromised?" Tres'fa asked lightly, "Or, if we are to believe Commander Skywalker, was. By the dark side of the Force. That is, broadly speaking, the contention is it not?"

"I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks we've had our fill of children's tales today." Mat Temedia's tone was only just civil.

The fighter commander shot him an irritated look, her lek'ku twitching in a mirror-image of his own expression. "I think enough of us have seen what Vader is capable of to never dismiss his powers as children's stories, don't you?"

"I'm not talking about his powers – I'm talking about the idea that evil is just something that happens to people and they can't control themselves because it's twisted their minds." He turned this last into a disgusted sneer. "Evil is a choice."

"Surely the whole thrust of Mister Sahtou's report is that it was not that simple." Lady Neluian adjusted the amulet at her throat. "I would never dare to defend the creature but I think it clear that in his own mind at least he was trapped by circumstances."

"Circumstances of his own making," Rieekan shot down the table, "Besides, I for one have no sympathy for anyone who thought they were so trapped them had no choice but to burn a few planets clean."

Orrimaarko's slammed fist punctuated the sentiment. "We don't care if the Emperor was personally making him dance like a puppet. He _is_ the Empire as far as we're concerned, now and always. His personal feelings are irrelevant. We want him tried for the results of his actions, not for feeling sorry about it now."

"And does he feel sorry?" The Princess was looking straight at Harvan, eyebrows drawn into a tight scowl. "I've read through this report three times from beginning to end," she went on, "and I still don't see anything in it that suggests Vader is remotely repentant for the crimes he committed."

Harvan ran his tongue over the insides of his lips, unsure if he was expected to respond. When everyone else lapsed into silence, it became clear he was.

"I, ah, believe he regrets what he has done," he said cautiously, "That is, he recognises the mistake he made in joining the Emperor."

"He recognises his mistake," Princess Organa repeated flatly, "I'm sure that'll be a great comfort to all the millions of people that suffered because of him."

"Ah . . . what I mean to say is . . . well, that he will plead guilty to any charges brought against him. I'm certain of that much."

"Wonderful. He'll admit to things it is absolutely beyond doubt that he did. Mr Sahtou, let me ask you something: if my brother had not been his son, or if he had never found out about Luke's existence, do you think for one minute that he would ever have turned on the Empire and helped the Rebellion succeed?"

Hardly daring to look away, Harvan glanced down at his hands. "I think, by his own admission, he would have eventually turned on the Emperor. But that is not the same thing."

"No. It isn't, is it?"

Mon Mothma placed her hand flat, almost but not quite in front of the Princess. "I think perhaps that we are at risk of straying into discussions best held at a later point."

The younger woman's lips thinned, then she nodded curtly. "I don't think I need any clarification on your report, Mr Sahtou. Frankly, it doesn't really tell me anything I didn't already know."

"Then, if I may?" Tres'fa gestured for attention, a gentle ripple running through her fur. "Mr Sahtou, you say that Vader would plead guilty. By that do you mean that he, speaking for himself, does not offer any defence at all?"

"He offers reasons for his actions. I don't believe he views them as mitigating circumstances. If I had not directly asked him to provide his perspective on events, he would not have offered it. Broadly speaking, no. He would not have defended himself."

"Even though there is a very real chance that he will be executed?"

"He . . ." Harvan frowned, trying to phrase the answer properly. "I don't believe he cares if he lives or dies any more. Clinging to life is part of the reason he became the . . . ah, the Emperor's apprentice. Turning away from one means turning away from the other."

Interesting, Lady Neluian observed, That is much what Jedi Skywalker told us.

"What does it matter?" Orrimaarko struck the table again. "What does it matter if Vader will certainly be executed? That's what we want! As long as he is fit for trial, everything else is meaningless!"

"And again," Admiral Ackbar snapped wetly, "I will ask – on what authority are we going to try him? This is the Alliance _to Restore the Republic_. We have not done that yet."

"And if the reports coming out of the Anoat Sector are anything to go by," General Cracken put in quietly, "we're only just starting to see how far we have to go to get it done."

"Exactly. Vader's crimes are against the Republic and against the people of the Republic. Until there exists a Republic again, we do not have the authority or the right to put him on trial."

"We have the right of the dressilian people!" Orrimaarko insisted, "You have the right of Mon Calamari! And you the twi'leks!" He pointed at Temedia, then at Lady Neluian. "You, the Sullest!"

Some of them, she murmured demurely, Only some of them.

"So you're suggesting that we haul him from one planet to the next and have each one try him separately?" The fighter commander's voice was thick with disbelief. "That's ridiculous. And besides, you know we can only execute him once, right?"

{I don't think the idea is entirely without merit,} one of the Duros representatives said mildly, {Not about the execution part, obviously, but taking him from planet to planet. It would be one solution.}

"One that would involve dedicating Alliance personnel to the task of protecting one of the most dangerous individuals in the galaxy." Madine's voice was thick with disbelief. "Protecting him, I might add, both from being killed prematurely and from being freed by whatever Imperial fanatics learn his itinerary."

"He won't live long enough anyway." Princess Organa shook her head firmly. "The time it would take to go through that many trials, never mind free enough worlds from Imperial control to make it even remotely count – it's completely unworkable."

Mon Mothma cleared her throat. "We are straying again, gentlebeings. However, General Madine touches on an important point. Mr Sahtou, should the worst happen and Vader were to be liberated by the Empire's forces, what would you imagine his response would be? Would he, for example, allow himself to be used as a rallying point for the remaining Imperial leadership?"

"Absolutely not. Or . . . rather . . . I do not believe he would. If for no other reason than his feelings towards his son."

"Really? So if Luke went crazy and defected, Vader would just go right along with it?" the Princess asked scornfully.

"I . . . I'm sorry, I don't think I can offer an opinion on that scenario. Forgive me – I can only tell you that finding out about his son's existence changed the direction of Vader's life. Even if, ah, even if events had not gone as they did, I think that Commander Skywalker would have remained the focus of his attention."

"By which you mean obsession."

"I suppose I do, yes, your highness."

"Whatever the source of the attachment, it allowed Skywalker to bring about the death of the Emperor." Ackbar flipped his fin-fingers one way then the other. "For that alone we should be grateful."

"I know that, Admiral. That's not what I'm getting at." Pressing her temples for a second, the Princess glanced around her. "Look. The purpose of a trial is make sure the laws people live under are fairly enforced, to show that a governing body is acting justly and openly, to bring about an acceptable and proportional outcome for both the defendant and the accuser, and – ideally – to determine the best way the defendant can be rehabilitated. Well, we can't claim to be a governing body or to be making the laws people live under. The laws they actually live under are laughably weighted towards letting people like Vader get away with anything. And I can't imagine any civilised punishment in this case that could even begin to be proportional. Which just leaves finding some way to rehabilitate Vader – which is laughable for several reasons but most of all because he didn't turn away from the Empire because it was the right thing to do. He did it because of this obsession with Luke. I don't know about anyone else here but even having read this lovely little life-story Mr Sahtou has compiled, I don't have any trouble imagining that if he'd managed to shoot Luke down over the first Death Star, he would have happily stood by and watched the Empire destroy a hundred worlds."

Murmurs of assent went around the table. Mon Mothma frowned. "There are other reasons for holding a trial. To be seen to be just, regardless of how much power one wields. To show good faith with those one hopes to liberate – and those one might take prisoner. We cannot simply default on our duty to be better than the Empire and execute whomsoever we want."

"Of course we can," Orrimaarko snarled, prompting both Ackbar and Lady Neluian to express their displeasure simultaneously.

"However," Mon Mothma said clearly before the argument could escalate, "these are discussions that must only be held after we have ascertained all the relevant facts. Does anyone else have any specific questions they would put to Mr Sahtou?"

A chorus of silence and shaking heads answered the question.

"Mr Sahtou, are you still content to let your report stand?"

He swallowed the surge of second-guessing that naturally sprang up at the question. "I am, ma'am."

"Then you are free to go, once again with our thanks. We will let you know if anything further is required of you."

* * *

 _Note: Due to ongoing technical difficulties (i.e. illness), I will now only be updating three times a week until I have built up enough of a stock of chapters to do otherwise. Thank you all for reading!_


	31. Chapter 31

Utterly exhausted, Harvan dragged himself the last few metres on to the port fore observation deck and collapsed into one of the chairs lining the rear wall. Space filled the sweep of the viewing gallery windows, arcing up and over. Principally designed to allow engineers an uncluttered view out over the hull, the decks were – with typical Mon Cal elegance – equally suited to recreational star-gazing when not sealed for battle. Harvan was extremely grateful no one else was currently taking advantage of that dual purpose.

The seat was designed for Mon Cal physiology and let his head fall back a little too far for comfort but that hardly mattered. He just wanted to sit under the stars for a little while and clear his mind.

Or rather, he just wanted it to all be over and snatching a few moments' quiet was simply the closest he was going to get.

He was under no illusions about the situation. The debates and arguments would rage on for days. The solution would be, at best, a messy compromise. Likely any decision would cause even more anger. And in the background lurked the Empire, busy splintering or regrouping depending on the temperament of each local governor. Towards whom the news of Vader's survival was probably even now winging its way.

Harvan's mouth twitched involuntarily. It was easy to think of the fleet as a self-contained world, free of the constant need to guard your words that was the hallmark of planet-based resistance cells. But even in the emptiness above the plain of the galaxy, a perpetual stream of scouts and supply ships flickered in and out of hyperspace, stretching out to places where careless words could spread into the wild. There was no true isolation, no bottle to keep the secret in, not between several hundred ships and several hundred thousand people.

Which begged the question of what the Empire would do, on top of what the Alliance decided. Would they leave Vader to his fate? Try to rescue him, to use as a figurehead to replace the Emperor, as Mon Mothma feared? Or try to execute him for treachery?

Time would presumably tell.

Soft footsteps came up through the access corridor, drawing him out of speculation. So much for his time alone. He straightened up, putting his hands on the edge of the seat in readiness to get up and leave. Not because he expected to be thrown out, simply because he did not want company.

Kaitis put her head around the hatchway, one blue-black eyebrow raised sharply. "Knew it," she told him, "Knew you'd come up here." She came all the way in, a square bottle held so it bounced against her leg. "What is it about you and running off to look at the stars when you're wiped out?"

"Perspective. And peace, I suppose."

"Oh that's peace is it? All that . . . squirming about going on in there?" Leaning over, she gently prodded his forehead before rocking back on her heels. "You humans are _weird_. On the plus side, I have a bottle of alarenic juice fresh off the _Kirit Star_."

"The _Kirit Star_ hasn't docked for six weeks."

"OK, so not exactly fresh, but it's been in the chill since then and . . . oh, look." With a sharp twist, Kaitis opened the bottle and thrust it at him. "Just shut up and drink, would you?"

Taking the offering, he smiled up at her then tipped a good measure of the juice down his throat. Time and the cold had turned it a little too tart but the fiery after-taste came through good and strong. "Urrh." He blinked a few times and handed it back. "Thank you."

"You obviously needed it." She took the seat next to him, knocking the heels of her boots against the deck. "Seriously, Sahtou. I wish you'd been able to talk to us about this."

"I do too. Though I was a little afraid you'd be angry with me."

"Try . . . what's the word . . . _incandescent_. You volunteered to interrogate Vader. I want to kick you out of an airlock."

"You're doing a good job of not showing it."

"Years of watching you, guess I picked up a few tricks."

They sat together watching the stars for a minute. Sentry ships flitted across the view, points of light and reflections soon lost back into the darkness.

"You remember that raid on Vidon Three?" Kaitis asked abruptly, "The one on the garrison?"

"Absolutely. I tend to remember the times I got shot."

"Oh yeah. Well anyway, what I mean is, how did you feel after we pulled it off?"

"Agonised mainly."

"Ha, ha. After that, obviously."

"I . . . I don't know. Relieved. Pleased. Glad we'd gotten away with it." He looked sideways at her. "Why, how did you feel?"

She took a swing from the bottle and handed it back to him. "For the first time like we might actually beat the Empire. That they _could_ be beaten – have I told you this before?"

"You've told me that that was when you stopped thinking you were just going to die and make no difference."

"Well it was. I got the same feeling when the Death Star blew over Endor. Times a million, because we'd got rid of the Emperor. Cos' that's the point when it because a sure thing, right? We're definitely going to win."

Harvan shrugged, drank, passed the bottle. "I'm not sure I've ever been certain we'll win. Just that we need to."

"Well, whatever. I don't feel that way any more anyway. Taking out the Emperor hasn't stopped the Empire shooting people on the streets, has it? And now we've got to deal with Vader . . . urgh." She swallowed and contorted her face in disgust. "What do we do if we can't win?"

"I don't know. But they don't have a giant indestructible battle station to atomise us with. I think that's a fairly big blow to their long-term plans."

The bottle switched between them a few more times. Alarenic juice barely counted as an intoxicating liquid by human or zeltron standards but each mouthful left a pleasant buzz on its way down.

"I mean it, by the way. I do wish I could have told you."

Kaitis shot him a look of surprise. "Long as I've known you, you've been easy with keeping secrets."

"Sometimes it's harder than others. Especially with something this big."

"Makes sense. Did you really save Vader's life?"

"Helped save it. I suppose. I shot at Kraver's troops if that's what you mean."

" _Why_?" Deep disbelief boiled under the word. "I'd have shot him myself."

"Duty. Desire to do the right thing. I don't know."

"You think they should let him get away with it?" she asked after the bottle had switched hands twice more, angry accusations swirling behind the stare she pinned him with.

Harvan looked into the block of green-gold glass in his hand, watching the liquid swill from side to side as he tilted it. "How would you suggest we punish someone who doesn't seem to care what happens to him? Anyway, just shooting him wouldn't have solved anything. It's not a decision any one person has the right to make alone."

"Bet you anything it's the one thing everyone in this fleet would agree on."

"Even the races who consider capital punishment abhorrent?"

"Oh shut up and give me that bottle back."


	32. Chapter 32

For the next few days, the Alliance Council met and debated and came to no decision on Vader's future. Harvan spent the time on light analysis duties, the low workload a concession to his still-healing injuries and – he suspected – the presumed after-effects of his last task.

In his off-duty hours, he stargazed or walked in the atrium, watching waves from the artificial lake wash against carefully sculpted beaches. It made a refreshing change from sitting hunched at his desk, pouring over records of the Empire's atrocities.

The mood aboard the flag ship remained tense. How much that was due to ongoing uncertainty and how much to Admiral Ackbar's foul mood on the rare occasions he was able to leave the conference room and stalk around the bridge was hard to say. Continued miserable news from worlds on which the Imperial authorities were cracking down in a desperate attempt to retain control over their populations did nothing for anyone's peace of mind.

Was Vader troubled by the continued suspense? Was he sitting in his new cell, wherever that was, worrying about the outcome of the council's deliberations? Or was he so resigned to his fate that it really did not matter how long it took to arrive, or what form it came in?

Absently watching a couple of dresselians skimming stones across the lake, Harvan considered the question. On the one hand, yes, Vader appeared largely apathetic to what happened next. And as he had told Princess Organa, Harvan was sure the man would not try and fight his case if he really were brought to trial. But this was someone who had gone to extreme, blood-thirsty lengths to be with his son. Regardless of how that had worked out for the greater good in the end and regardless of how Vader chose to present himself, was it really likely that, after all that, he would just be willing to give up on all he had fought for –?

Harvan stopped himself. He was second-guessing his report and all the hours spent getting an understanding of how Vader worked. Not only was that an unproductive use of his time, it was pointless. His opinion, for what it would ultimately be worth, had been given. Any influence he might have had on Vader's future was over. Worrying about it further would not help with anything, least of all his personal state of mind. Better to leave it for the nightmares and get on with the rest of his life.

Still . . .

Still, Harvan thought as he turned and left the dresselians to be harangued by an angry, dripping wet and slightly bruised Mon Cal, there was absolutely no assurance that _Vader's_ influence on _his_ future was over.

Quite the reverse, in fact.


	33. Chapter 33

" _Your attention please."_ The fleet-officer's voice boomed through the corridors of _Home-One_ , cutting across a thousand different working days. _"Please stand by for an address by the chancellor."_

The briefest of pauses, a slight crackle on the comm. Then Mon Mothma spoke. _"For the past nine days, the Alliance leadership has been in deep discussion regarding the fate of Lord Darth Vader, currently a prisoner in this fleet. These discussions have been arduous for all of us and the decisions we have made were not taken lightly. Nor have they been taken with complete unanimity. Quite understandably, this is a matter that has brought out the strongest of feelings and I deeply regret that we could not find a solution that would satisfy all parties represented. Equally however, I recognise that a decision must be taken and taken swiftly."_

She drew an audible breath. _"We have resolved that we do not have the authority to make a final decision as to Darth Vader's ultimate fate. While we represent a great many worlds who have declared against the Empire and in favour of the ideals of the Republic, we as a group cannot speak for their entire populations. Therefore we intend to submit the question to a conclave of as many rebel worlds as possible, bringing together their chosen representatives to debate the response to Vader's crimes. It is the people of the galaxy who have been wronged by this man and as far as it is possible, it must be they who judge him._

" _I know that this might well not be the decision you anticipated or wanted. I am aware that many would have preferred us to enact summery justice, taking advantage of the military might the Empire forced us to use against it. But we could not in good conscience countenance such an action and I have faith that everyone listening will understand that. All these long years, we have been fighting for something better than the Empire. For a peace founded on cooperation and equal representation, not on bloodshed and tyranny. We are closer now than ever before to bringing light back to a galaxy long gripped by darkness and now more than ever must act on our better natures. If we are to bring justice to the worlds we free, it must be true justice, built from consensus and truth, not vengeance, forged from the kind of hatred and elitism drives the Empire_

" _This hearing will be as open as possible. However, the precise arrangements will remain secret in advance of its commencement in order to maintain security. The strategic requirements will shortly be released to those who will be involved in planning the conclave. I trust in your diligence and discretion and expect only what you have proven yourselves capable of in the past. To everyone else, I simply appeal for patience and the continued resolve to be better than the Empire that has carried us so far. We will face this challenge as we have faced all others: with dignity and the certainty of a better future._

" _Thank you."_

The comm clicked off. The halls of the flagship, of every ship in the fleet, rang with silence. Then with a thousand different voices.


	34. Chapter 34

Harvan frowned at the star map, gently circling his stylus between a pair of twin planets on the fringes of the Mirilan system.

"Something wrong?" Cardith Blade asked from the opposite side of the display, not looking up from the pad she was examining.

"Did we get any information on the construction of planetary shields from the raid on Terris'dum?"

"I don't think so. S-6 – did we?"

The spindly droid beside Blade cocked its head to one side, photo-receptors blinking. "There was mention of heavy-duty projector equipment being moved through the sector in one of the cargo registries. However, no specifics were recorded."

"That any help?"

"Ah . . . perhaps." Harvan stabbed at the larger of the planets. "If you placed a fuel-dump here, you'd need a shield to protect it from the local radiation levels. The shadow of the smaller planet would help make that viable."

"Too complicated. The local gravity would be too difficult to navigate."

"Not especially. Less than the average dual-planetary system, according to the records. Besides . . . ah, here." He flicked a document up and across the display. "There were surveys done twenty years before the Republic fell that suggested there were usable resources there. The pay-off in mining and refining fuel locally might have offset the initial outlay."

Blade finally put aside her pad and pressed her knuckles on the lip of the table, squinting at the planets. "OK, let's run with it for a moment. The Empire needs a staging ground to cover three semi-critical systems in this sector, all of which have awkward enough conditions to make permanent fleets impractical. Mirilan is an inoffensive star no one's ever had much interest in that just happens to be an easy jump from two of those systems and an only slightly complex one from the third."

"Fitting the response times encountered by strike teams sent in to those three systems."

"Granted. So we, as the Empire, come to Mirilan and start looking around for a suitable base. We dismiss the outer two planets because they're balls of ice with no useful gravity. The next planet of any size is a gas giant. But we don't build a space platform because . . .?"

"Because space stations are harder to provision without extended supply lines and would, in any case, show up very obviously to any ship that happened to stop there for a navigation bearing."

"Speculation but granted for the moment. The innermost planet is practically touching Mirilan's photosphere, so that's out. That leaves the dual planets far enough out not to be molten but still too close to be safe. We know they _might_ contain usable materials so we take a gamble and send in the prospectors." Blade shut one eye. "I still think the space station is the more sensible option. These two are so far in that the hyperspace horizon is double what it would be for the gas giant."

"All to the good if you want to remain hidden from any ship that chanced in. They'd never come close. And that's an easy horizon for a cruiser to make in the times we've seen."

"Speculation again."

"But the, ah, the supply deficit for materials flowing into this region from C'lanish isn't." Harvan opened another file. "If it's a space station, where are the gravity generator spares or the hydroponic supplies? Or the fuel pods?"

Snorting, Blade straightened. "What do you think, S-6?"

"Mr Sahtou's assessment matches available information. The spare part allocation not accounted for among other receiving Imperial bases in this region appears more consistent with a planet-based facility than a space station."

"Right." Threading a finger through one loop of her greying hair, Blade pursed her lips. "Right," she repeated, "I take the logic. How do we find out for sure? The horizon problem means any scout will have to out-run the welcome committee. And the twin-planet set-up means getting a long-range reading is going to be harder, which, I grant you, is a point in favour of the staging ground being there."

"I suggest handing that question over to Lieutenant Ordava," Harvan said, "His squadron did a lot of work scoping out complex stellar and planetary phenomena for potential base sites after Hoth. I'm sure he'll have encountered something like this."

"Good call. I'll make the recommendation." Blade keyed her command cylinder. "Stars knows if we'll get round to it before the trial but you never know. I suppose if we decide to go for it, you'll be doing the assessment on whether we commit ground troops to try and nab the fuel or not?"

Harvan bit his lip then shook his head. "Lefland's more familiar with those kinds of facilities. I know the logistics that go into building them more than how they're actually built."

"Fair enough."

Swinging her arms, Blade took a step back from the table and scrutinised the map as a whole. It was thick with Imperial symbols, the inroads made by Alliance forces notable but still overshadowed. "Long odds, short lines. Business as usual. This must all be a relaxing change of pace after playing nice with Vader, huh?"

"It, ah . . . yes, I suppose it is," Harvan admitted, hoping she wasn't going to ask him what it had been like. As much as he liked working with Blade, she had a tendency not to let topics of conversation go until they had been utterly exhausted.

But she didn't press the matter. Instead, she snorted again and signalled S-6 to bring up another information packet. "Well, it's good to have you back in the day job –" Her eyes suddenly focused on something behind Harvan's back. "Although maybe that's not going to last long . . ."

A golden protocol droid was making its way towards them through the rows of display tables, awkwardly manoeuvring around analysts and tacticians with many excuse mes and terribly sorrys. At some length, it reached them and looked from Blade to Harvan with the expression of perpetual astonishment that all 3PO droids possessed.

"Do excuse me," it said, "but would you be Mr Harvan Sahtou? Princess Leia Organa was hoping that you might be able to attend her for a few minutes."


	35. Chapter 35

_Many apologies for the lack of updates this week - I came down with a stinking cold last weekend and it has well and truly ruined my schedule. Getting over it now - though I am sounding much more husky than usual - so hopefully normal service will be restored._

* * *

Leia Organa's cabin was much like General Madine's: plain, uncluttered, free of distracting decoration. There was little outward sign that it belonged to a woman who had represented her people in the Imperial Senate. But then, Harvan had not expected it to. From what he knew of the Princess, it was hard to imagine her ever spending much time worrying about décor or pushing data behind a desk.

Even now, with her 3PO droid showing him to a chair at her request, she was pacing restlessly up and down in front of the view port. It was a good half-minute before she took a seat herself and dismissed the fussing droid with a snapped, " _Thank you_ , Threepio!"

When they were finally alone, she made a point of lacing her fingers together – to stop herself from fiddling with them, Harvan thought. She fixed him with the same tight scowl she had worn during his meeting with the council. "Thank you for coming, Mr – do you prefer Mr Sahtou, Harvan or something else?"

"Ah . . . well . . . Harvan is fine, if you prefer, your highness."

"All right then, Harvan. I'm sorry to drag you away from your work. Normally I'd never have done so but I have just had a very aggravating discussion with my brother and I need to ask you a question."

"I . . . of course. What can I . . . what is it that I can help you with?"

The Princess' mouth twitched in a grimace, momentarily drawing out some similarity in her face to Commander Skywalker's. "Help probably isn't the word. I don't think I'll like the answer. But I think you'll probably give me the closest to an unbiased answer as I'm likely to get any time soon. So – tell me: what does Vader think of me?"

It was not quite true to say Harvan had not been expecting that to be the question. In many ways, it was the logical possibility – as egocentric as it might sound in isolation, it covered a whole host of issues that the Princess was probably confronting every day that Vader remained in the fleet, not least the rumours abounding about a rift between her and her brother over how to deal with their shared parentage. That obviousness did not make expressing an answer any easier.

"He . . . ah, well . . . that is . . ." Harvan mentally steadied himself and tried to order his thoughts into something resembling a coherent response. "I can't honestly say I know. He did not talk about you a great deal. I think because he did not wish to be reminded of . . ."

"You can say it," the Princess told him flatly, "Of what he did to me."

"Ah, yes. I _believe_ he regrets it a great deal. That knowing he is your father . . . makes that all the worse."

"My father." Her voice stayed flat but there was a new hardness in her eyes. "My father taught me that regret is a warning not to make the same mistakes again. He taught me to care about the consequences my actions had for others and to be the best parts of the people I represented. And he died on Alderaan while _Darth_ _Vader_ forced me to watch." She blinked once, slowly, breathing in deeply through her nose. "Do I need to explain why I am so angry that _he_ thinks of himself as my father?"

Harvan swallowed. "No." Then, regaining his courage, he continued, "I did not mean to imply . . . From what he told me, he seems to view your existence as a link to a . . . part of himself that he thought was completely gone. Maybe that's not the best way to put it – what I mean is, he thought he had destroyed everything of the man he was before he became Vader. You and your brother prove that wasn't completely true."

Princess Organa's expression shifted slightly. Without a word, she got up and faced the view port, hands clasped tight behind her back. Harvan watched her in silence, at a loss as to what he was expected to do or say. The line of the Princess' jaw tightened.

"Luke says the same thing," she said, shoulders lifting slightly, "I keep telling him it doesn't help. Feeling bad about hurting two people among millions because they happen to be the ones you're related to doesn't make up for everything else. And being related to someone doesn't place you under an obligation to forgive them." Spinning on her heel, she stalked back to the desk. "Does _he_ expect me to forgive him?"

Harvan shifted awkwardly. "Your highness . . ." He held up his hands. "I . . . I'm sorry. I . . . can tell you, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, that Darth Vader really was once the man called Anakin Skywalker. I can list for you all the actions he described to me and tell you how many corroborating accounts I have been able to find for each. I can take you through the mannerisms he displayed when describing . . . how the Empire bombed the rebels on Timarine or . . . when I asked him about the planet Tatooine. Beyond that . . . I cannot tell anything more about what he thinks or expects than you can. Only what he shows by his words and actions."

"Which is that he _regrets_ the torture and the atrocities." The contempt in the Princess' voice was palpable, which she seemed to realise because she stopped and pressed her lips together, tension gathering then easing from her slight frame. "I appreciate the straight answer, Harvan. I don't except you to have some magical window into Vader's mind." Something almost like a smile ghosted across her face. "That, apparently, is my brother's job. Which is how he can tell me that Vader's love saved him and that Vader wants to make amends with an absolute certainty that frankly deeply concerns me." She sat down again, smile gone as though it had never been. "And I suppose what I wanted was for you to tell me that deep down you believed it was all an act and Luke was being conned by an unrepentant dark Jedi. But like I said, I knew I wouldn't like your answer."

"I'm, ah, sorry."

Waving the apology aside, she tapped the desktop with her forefinger. "I asked because I'm stuck between someone I trust implicitly telling me something I do not remotely want to hear or believe, my duties to the Alliance which at the moment include recusing myself from any active role in events that will probably shape all our futures, and being presented with a whole new family history I could happily have lived without. Anything that gives me the slightest idea which way to jump in all that would have been very welcome. But . . ." She shrugged expressively.

Harvan gave a non-committal half-nod of understanding. "I'm sorry I can't be of greater help. If there is anything in my report that I can clarify or try to explain further . . ."

"No, no. You did your job well, Harvan. I've honestly no idea how you managed it. I'm sorry I didn't echo Mon Mothma's compliments at the time but I'm personally very grateful to you for your work. You're a very brave man to have undertaken it."

"Well, I, ah, wouldn't have said brave . . . someone needed to do it."

The Princess smiled properly this time, if tiredly. "True enough but not everyone volunteers to do what needs to be done. Thank you. I've taken up more than enough of your time." She rose, coming around to show him to the door.

"Thank you," he said automatically, "Of course, if there is anything else you need . . . ah." He stopped, opened his mouth, thought better of it, then had second thoughts about that too. "Your highness, during my research . . . there were some things that I did not think were relevant to my report but . . . well, there were a few details regarding your, ah, biological mother that I uncovered. Nothing, um, especially significant but if you would like, I could send them to you."

She went perfectly still at his side and for the long moment she was silent, he desperately wished the deck would open under his feet and drop him into space. Then she said, "It's strange. I studied Senator Amidala's speeches over and over when my father was teaching me. The galaxy at large tends to remember her as some sort of apologist for one faction or another during the Clone Wars but she always seemed to me to be simply calling for an end to pointless bloodshed. She fought against the Emperor's rise with all her might – I always admired her for that. But she's still a stranger. Just another face looking out of the history books." She looked up at him, face unreadable. "Yes, thank you Harvan. I would very much like to see whatever you were able to find out about her."


	36. Chapter 36

The notes Harvan had made on Vader's description of the destruction of Alderaan covered some ten thousand words, all of which felt utterly inadequate to the subject. The bold facts were clear enough and matched exactly with the Princess' own account as held on file by the Alliance. Grand Moff Tarkin had initiated the act of mass murder as a demonstration of what it meant to defy the Empire – the ultimate expression of his doctrine of rule-by-fear. This had the additional advantage of providing adequate motivation for Leia Organa to betray the Rebellion, at least in theory. The Princess had gambled that under such circumstances, the Empire would believe a half-lie but her loss was due to a stacked deck, not a failing in her bluff. Tarkin would have destroyed the planet regardless, just to prove that the Death Star was fully operational.

Throughout it all, Vader supported the plan entirely. He distrusted the Death Star as a concept, held it in contempt, even. He considered it an ultimately hollow construction, vulnerable and transient compared to the might of the Force. But ruling by fear was something he understood well. The galaxy cowed by the consequences of disobedience was his master's grand vision and he willingly – and expertly – imposed it. He admitted as much freely and without hesitation. Even when it came to describing the act of forcing the Princess to watch her home die, his voice did not falter in its weary, methodical pattern. It was necessary, or so he believed at the time. He offered no apology for that, whether he was ashamed of it or not.

That was not what had stuck in Harvan's mind though, not what made him feel cold inside to think about it, even now.

When Vader described the actual moment of Alderaan's destruction, he did not talk about a super laser cutting through a planetary crust. He spoke instead of the life wiped out in the blast. "The Death Star fired and every being on Alderaan died in seconds. Their deaths radiated through the Force itself. I . . . felt their fear. Their pain. Perhaps I was too quick to dismiss the weapon. I wondered as much afterwards. There is an old Jedi concept, one I had heard once but never paid much attention to, that there were events violent enough to have left scars on the Force itself. After Alderaan I began to wonder if that was not the true reason the Emperor wanted a way to kill his enemies so thoroughly and completely. A way to attack the Force itself."

And that, for Vader, had been the concern. That his master might have created a way to strike at the source of both their powers. Yet if what he said was true, then he had not just witnessed the deaths of Alderaan's people at a distance – he had actually _felt_ them die and shared in their terror. On a personal level, the idea of continuing to serve the Empire after experiencing something so horrific revolted Harvan. From a more detached perspective, it demonstrated how numb Vader was to the suffering of others and possibly the reason why. Going by his own words, he could sense the pain he inflicted every time he lashed out. How long had it taken for him to become inured to that, so much so that scale and numbers no longer mattered?

The Princess was right. Regret was not enough to balance what Vader had done. Yet to break through such a staggering level of desensitisation and spur him to feel even that much was an achievement for which Harvan was not sure Luke Skywalker received enough credit. Perhaps the scale of that was not lost on a Jedi Knight who could sense the gulf separating the old monstrous Vader from the man sitting in his cell staring at the wall, however wide or narrow that gap truly was.

As he compiled the information he had promised, Harvan hoped that that insight would serve the Commander well enough to understand why, where he saw the traces of Anakin Skywalker, his sister saw only the monster.


	37. Chapter 37

"It comes to something when you have to learn news this big from the Empire." The large red-faced human sitting on the other side of the briefing room table shook his head in exaggerated astonishment. "Though if I'm honest, I didn't believe it 'til I got here."

Harvan grimaced in sympathy. It was all to easy to imagine the disbelief of someone learning for the first time that – in effect – the Alliance would be placing Darth Vader on trial. "Do you have an impression of how widespread this information is within the Imperial forces?"

Lieutenant Linaen, late of the Imperial Navy and long-time member of Alliance Intelligence, took a deep draw on the pipe he had insisted on being given before the debriefing commenced. With consummate skill, he exhaled a perfect smoke-ring. "As far as I can tell, no one has a blind clue what anyone else is doing. Half the governors are trying to convince people the Death Star never blew up. The other half each have a different idea how they should take over where the Emperor left off. The fleet admirals aren't much better. My captain was trying to deal with half a dozen contradicting orders when I got out. Right now, the only thing in a worse state than the chain of command is the intelligence network."

Harvan's fingers danced across his pad while Linaen spoke. Even after only half an hour's exposure, he was getting used to the way the big man talked around subjects, slowly spiralling in on his points.

"It's truly impressive how quickly they've started stabbing each other in the back. Seems like every intel-chief is trying to pin the blame for the Endor leak on every other intel-chief and they don't care who gets caught in the cross-fire. There's enough rumourmongering and plain old lying going on that you couldn't trust them to tell you the date, let alone what happened to Vader after the Death Star blew. Rumours have been flying for weeks but like I said, nothing you could trust."

Linaen puffed at his pipe and leant back until his chair creaked in protest. "From what I heard, the first solid info they got about it was from a free-trader who gets tapped by Ch'riis'yl system security bureau from time to time. That's what the packet beamed to the _Tyranic_ said anyway. They verified it against a partial data-dump taken from a captured blockade runner over Ventrax."

"The _Caldera_?" Harvan asked, guessing from what he knew of recent Alliance losses.

"Not a clue. Packet didn't say. Anyway, this is all supposed to be top priority data and not for general consumption but with things the way they are, the usual bully-boys aren't doing too good a job at keeping everyone staring at their feet. My experience is that the news is spreading pretty fast among the commissioned ranks. Non-comms are probably still mostly in the dark, at least they were the last few places I got a chance to look at. Stormtroopers probably don't know much about it but then they don't really go in for paying attention to stuff beyond the end of their blasters. I wish I could give you a view into more than a single star destroyer and a couple of way-stations but it was that or getting out while the getting was good, so I hope you don't mind I chose the option that keeps my skin on."

"Not at all." Harvan smiled. "It's good to have you back with us."

"Well I don't know about that. I'm just glad to be out of that damned uniform at last. Never, ever got used to this bloody boots." Linaen made a show of rubbing at his lower leg. "Anyway, I think the thing you need to know is that the Empire, however it's going to fall apart, knows full well where Vader is now, even if they're not necessarily sure what's happened to him in the meantime. What they'll do with that . . ." He held up his enormous hands. "Your guess is as good as mine right now. I heard one rumour that a bunch of the Emperor's special-ops teams went dark the second he bit vacuum but whether they'd want to try springing Vader, I don't know. Most of the Royal Guard must have been on that thing when it blew anyway, right?"

Frowning, Harvan thought back to a similar rumour mentioned in an interview with a defecting stormtrooper commander that Trin Camberlain had shown him a couple of days before. That the moment the Emperor died, whole sections of the Imperial military no one had ever really noticed before had suddenly evaporated, leaving holes in everything from deep cover surveillance to military stores. There was still no concrete evidence to back it up, but the idea alone was worrying enough.

"What was the reaction to the news that Vader was still alive?" he asked, trying not to breath as Linaen blew another smoke ring.

"Honestly? Most of the people I had contact with day-to-day would have been happy if he'd been blown to atomic dust alongside his boss. There was a lot of talk about the governors and Moffs hoping like blazes he was gone so they could make a claim for the throne. You know people assumed he'd take over if the Emperor died, right? Which scared the ever loving hell out of anyone who thought about it for more than five seconds." Linaen let the pipe rest for a moment and arranged his face in an expression of bland indifference. "But the Empire's officers obey their orders to the letter," he said in the clipped tones of an Imperial Academy graduate, "so we would of course all buckle down and let ourselves be throttled one by one if it came to that. Or we would have," he completed, dropping the act again, "if everything hadn't gone wrong so fast. You have any idea how much manpower and material was tied up in that battle-station? It pretty much bankrupted the Empire the first time around, can you imagine how badly this has hit them? Well, I suppose you can, that's your job, right? Frankly, the Empire has bigger things to worry about now than Vader. From what I overheard, the rumour is that no one wants to be the one to lift a finger to help him. No one owes him any loyalty. It will make a lot of power grabs easier if he just . . . goes away."

"None of them, the higher ranking Imperials I mean – none of them are worried that allowing the Alliance to try Vader, or at least arrange his trial would give us legitimacy?"

"If they're worried about that, it hasn't filtered down to the level I was working at. It doesn't match up to any impression of what the higher ups were doing that I got. I know there was some murmuring about it being impossible to dismiss the Alliance any more . . . nothing as definite as talking about Vader making the difference though. The Emperor still eclipses him on that score!" Chuckling, Linaen tapped his pipe against his hand. "I wish I could have read their minds for you, Mr Sahtou, but I never got the chance to try. For all I know, they might be planning a daring rescue mission right now but if so, nothing I saw suggested the _Tyranic_ will be part of it. We were ordered to try and carry on pretty much as normal, which got a lot harder very quickly. It's amazing what people can achieve when they stop thinking the Empire's unstoppable."

Harvan gave a cough of laughter. "Very true. Now, would you mind talking about some of the political shifts we've heard rumours about? Perhaps you can give us a little better idea exactly who is coming out on top amongst all the in fighting . . ."


	38. Chapter 38

"Ah, General? You wanted to see . . . ah, me . . . ?"

"I did," Madine said, voice heavy. He gestured to the chair next to the one in which Commander Skywalker was seated. "Come in and sit down, Harvan. We need to talk to you."

He did as instructed, somewhat cautiously. Skywalker gave him an encouraging smile that quickly evaporated into an air of quiet concern. Madine frowned at him before rapping his knuckles gently against his desk a couple of times. "I think I'll let the Commander explain this," he decided.

Harvan looked sideways at Skywalker, who took a deep breath before meeting his eyes. "My father would like to speak to you again, if that would be possible."

Cold shock ran straight down Harvan's spine. Dumbfounded, he was quite unable to respond before the Commander went on.

"He wants . . . he would like to complete the work, as it were. To go into the reasons for his actions since being taken prisoner. I know you've finished your report but he . . . he wants to give a full account even so." Skywalker licked his lips. "He doesn't want to somehow prove he has changed, although you may interpret it like that. I think . . . I believe he feels this is . . . necessary. I'm not sure."

Madine made a dismissive noise and rolled his eyes to the opposite wall.

"He would like to talk to you again, Mr Sahtou," the Commander persisted, "He's asking if you would be the one to put this last part of his testimony on record. If you are willing."

"This is in no way an order," Madine broke in, "No one will blame you for saying no. I agreed to let the request be put to you. Nothing more."

"Absolutely," Skywalker agreed without hesitation, nodding emphatically, "I don't mean to imply that this is anything other than a request, one you are perfectly entitled to turn down. I . . . I'd understand if you did."

"I see . . ." Harvan said this more or less because he did not know what else he could say.

Grim-faced, Madine leant forward in his seat. "If you want to do this, if you think it would be valuable to the Alliance, I am willing to give you the time. But I want to express my deepest reservations about the whole idea of sending you back in with Vader when it is not absolutely necessary."

"There is no danger, General."

"With the greatest respect for your abilities and insight, Skywalker, unless you are planning on standing right next to him during the entire thing, I am never going to believe that Darth Vader constitutes 'no danger' to anyone."

"Would he be prepared to talk to anyone else?" Harvan asked, forestalling any debate on the issue.

The Commander rubbed at the inside of his right wrist. "He won't talk to me about it. At least, he won't let me be the one to put it on record. Which to be fair, I couldn't with any neutrality. And I think he's comfortable talking to you in a way he isn't with the other people who have interviewed him for the Alliance. He . . . well, he trusts your motivation."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I don't imagine he will speak to anyone," Skywalker said with a shrug, "Not about this."

Leaving a gap in the record. One that it was not Harvan's official responsibility to fill, not in the slightest. This was not a task that the Alliance wanted undertaken. It would not play any part in decisions that, after all, had already been taken. No one, not even the man communicating the request, seemed to expect him to agree. Hadn't he been relieved to leave the cell behind? Hadn't he been overjoyed to escape being sealed in with the rasping husk of one of the most hated men in the galaxy?

"I will document whatever he wishes to say," Harvan told the Commander, trying not to stammer or choke on the words. "If there are any details that need to be cross-checked and I am allowed the time, I will endeavour to do so. General, sir, would I be expected to submit a formal report of what I record?"

Madine blinked and began to shake his head. "No, I – hm. I suppose if you really want to do this, you might as well do it properly. I will see that anything you submit is appended as supplementary to your previous report."

"Thank you, sir."

Commander Skywalker's face was a picture of relief. "Mr Sahtou . . . thank you." He managed a smile, tremulous but sincere and heartfelt. "Thank you."

Harvan nodded to him, not trusting himself to do more, and wondered what in the stars he was doing.

Something that needed to be done, most likely.


	39. Chapter 39

Vader had been moved to a frigate, similar in size and class to _Redemption_ but without medical facilities stuffed into every available space. Unlike the prison corvette, the frigate teamed with crew, soldiers and droids, all rubbing shoulders at every intersection and junction. Part of that was pure practicality: _Fidelity_ was a working ship and the Alliance could not afford to take even a single frigate out of full fighting readiness. The crew could not be reduced to a skeleton as easily as a blockade runner. But there was more to it than that. With secrecy having failed, the Alliance was trusting to numbers and comradeship to avert any more attempts on Vader's life. The risk of someone making an attempt was likely increased but at the same time, so was the number of people standing in their way.

Commander Skywalker looked as if he wanted to say something right the way through escorting Harvan from docking bay to the cell but was not able to manage it. For his part, Harvan did not feel much like talking. A respite from Vader's presence had done nothing to ease the nerves that now chewed at his stomach with refreshed vigour. Centring himself by reviewing another late night's work in his head was still only a partially effective means of distraction – mostly, it just reminded him once more of who he was on his way to see.

Much to Harvan's surprise, when they turned into the short passageway leading to the new cell, Sergeant Disris was waiting for them. She came to attention and saluted as they approached. "Commander. Mr Sahtou."

"May we have access, Sergeant?" Skywalker asked, studiously polite.

"The prisoner has requested you wait outside, sir," Disris said, staring at a point slightly to the left of his ear, "He would prefer to speak to Mr Sahtou alone, as previously." Her voice and expression gave no indication of what she thought about this.

With a sigh, Skywalker stepped aside. "I'll wait for you here, then," he said to Harvan.

"I don't know how long this will take, sir. You, ah, might not want to, ah . . ."

"I'll wait," he repeated firmly.

Disris had her control disc already to hand. She raised it and glanced at Harvan. "Really going to go back in with him?" she asked quietly.

Harvan bent his head, in acceptance or resignation, he was not sure. "Yes."

The sergeant triggered the door and he stepped through.

The new cell was better lit than the old one, though still not quite up to optimal levels for the average human. It was not as bare either: a scattering of medical equipment lined one of the walls, the usual mix of surplus civilian modules and instruments blatantly ripped out of an Imperial infirmary. There were more chairs too, set out rather than stacked in the corner. Even the display screen in the wall was more visible, more obviously present as a potential distraction from being sealed up in a single room.

Whether these concessions towards – if not exactly comfort, then something other than monotony – whether they helped Vader's state of mind, they were enough to make the place less immediately oppressive.

Harvan would happily have carried on focusing on such details but his eyes were all too quickly drawn to the centre of the room and the reason for his being there.

Vader sat, as before, bolt upright and rigid in a chair that was too small for his frame. His armour bore the new scars gained in the attack on the prison ship, fresh patches of colourless plastisteel and armour-weave stark against chest and arms. The black robes shredded by the bomb blast had been replaced with a set in some rough, dark grey material. Simply as a contrast to the fixed image of Vader in Harvan's mind, the change was startling: no longer was he faced with a single mass of blackness but with layers and lines that threw the harsh angles of the mask into sharp relief. Whether that helped or not was open to debate. Peripherally, Harvan noticed that the bare cybernetics of Vader's right hand had been covered with a new glove.

There was a blue and white astromech at his side, display panels swirling gently with colours. It swivelled as Harvan came in, warbling agitatedly. Stirring, Vader reached out to touch its dome. "Mr Sahtou. Do not mind Artoo. He is overly concerned for my health."

'Artoo'. The name sat oddly in Vader's voicoder, at once strangely affectionate and deeply uncomfortable. Harvan recognised the droid on a second look – the R2-D2 unit that had carried the plans for the first Death Star and hence become inseparable from Commander Skywalker. Did that loyalty now encompass his father as well?

"You, ah . . . I understand you wish to . . . talk to me again."

"Yes. I am . . . grateful that you agreed to come. Be seated." Vader gestured to one chair already set up facing him.

Harvan did as requested – and it was a request, without any forcefulness behind it. He placed his holo-recorder between them and set his pad on his lap. Totally expectedly, nerves set his stylus rattling against the casing.

When he looked up, he discovered the Vader's stare had lost none of its power. Whatever the damage or the apparel around it, it was still the same death's head mask, still evocative of too many nightmares to ever be forgotten. "Ah . . . I, ah, understand . . . I was told you wanted to talk about the, ah, events that have transpired since you . . . since the destruction of the Death Star."

Vader was silent for a few seconds. "The last time you came, I described my reasons for joining the Emperor. What would you have asked if we had not been interrupted?"

Harvan almost admired the understatement in the question. "I, well . . . there were a few points I wanted to go over again . . . but now my report is submitted, they're largely redundant. I, ah, suppose I might have asked about your experiences and actions since Commander Skywalker . . . brought you in. If that's what you are asking, I mean."

Shifting his weight slightly, Vader inclined his head. The astromech softly twittered and slid a little closer. "I did not expect to survive," Vader said, "Even when I recovered consciousness, I assumed I would only live a short while, without the power of the Dark Side to sustain me . . . and yet I continue to live. Luke has helped me to cope with an existence within this suit rather than . . . raging against it. He wishes me to go on living. To be the good man he believes me to be. I can . . . use that. His faith in me gives me something to strive for. It was why I agreed to tell the Rebellion everything I know of the Emperor's secrets. A means of . . . helping. Of atoning."

For a little while, he fell silent again. Harvan chose to wait for him to speak again. Vader's breath hissed rhythmically – weaker, he thought, than before. Less all-pervading.

"I have spent much time meditating on the past. Your questions helped with that." Vader tilted his hand, gesturing at their surroundings. "And I can feel the hatred and anger of those around me, the fear and suffering I have caused. It is easy to evoke my past deeds . . . to find some way of confronting them rather than . . ." His voice faded away. "A Jedi is taught to seek peace through understanding. It has been a long time since I was a Jedi and yet . . . tell me about the man who led the attack on the prison ship, Mr Sahtou. Please."

As awkward as 'Artoo' had sounded, 'please' was vastly more so.

"Major Kraver?" Harven tapped the side of his pad, bringing up the details he had prepared. Not that he really needed to refer to them. "You killed every other member of his strike team during a raid on an Alliance fall-back base on Ziost. He was imprisoned, tortured and slated for execution. Not, I believe, on your orders but simply as a matter of course given that he was a ranking Alliance officer."

"And he escaped?"

"He was rescued. A lucky chance more than anything else. A local resistance group attacked the prison where he was being held. The torture left him in need weeks of bacta treatment and even then, he needed prosthetics to restore function in his legs."

"He . . . considers me responsible for that?"

"For the deaths of his comrades. The torture served to strengthen his hatred of the Empire in general, not you, ah, in particular. At least going by the evaluations I have access to."

Vader seemed to consider this. "I recall Ziost . . . It was not a planet that should ever have been visited by those resisting the Empire." He stirred visibly from his reverie. "Why did Kraver join the Rebellion?"

"I . . . don't know. There were rumours he was in the Republic military immediately before the rise of the Empire. Beyond that . . . he keeps his reasons to himself. Many Alliance members do."

"I glimpsed images in his anger," Vader said pensively, "A riot. Faces covered in blood . . ."

Unsure how appropriate it would be to listen to reports of private thoughts, Harven frowned intensely at the screen in front of him.

"He is not unusual. Is he?"

Harvan looked up. "Not in his motivations, if that is what you, ah, mean. His troops followed him because their principles would not allow them to stand by while you still lived. There are almost certainly many who feel the same way throughout the Alliance."

"Some of whom will act on their principles."

"I . . . would imagine it is likely some will try."

"I had been expecting it since I first realised where Luke had brought me. The Rebellion is not as disciplined as the Imperial armies. It was only to be expected that –" Vader stopped abruptly. "I assume you do not agree with that assessment?"

"Not . . . not exactly. When your cause is to fight against absolute authority, resistance to, well, any authority is part of that."

Vader did not reply.

Steeling himself, Harvan decided to try to guide them back on to the stated reason he was there. "If you were expecting an attack, were you planning how to respond?"

Artoo whistled, almost warningly. Vader tilted his head. "I did not intend to resist."

"During the attack . . . I noticed you used your, ah, powers defensively."

"Yes." Vader's fingers curled, uncurled. "To protect you. The sergeant, the Deveronian. It took effort. Focus I did not believe myself capable of any more."

"The, ah, dark side of the Force?"

"No." The word came firm and final, softly thunderous. "I drew upon the Force without anger or hate, in defence of others. I would have allowed them to kill me in that cell if it had meant no one else were harmed. You would not allow that though. Your orders . . . I did what I could. I called to Luke, hoping he would reach us in time to stop the attack."

"You did not ask us to leave you," Harvan pointed out carefully, "You could have done."

"You would not have listened. And Kraver would not have spared you."

Which was probably true on both counts. "Given that, did you expect your appeal to him to work? Asking him to spare us and kill you alone?"

"I . . ." The hesitation was far more pronounced than ever before. Vader made a fist, forced his hand to unclench, rested it against his belt. "I had to try. It is what Luke would have done." Abruptly, he leaned forward. It was all Harvan could do not to flinch away. "Mr Sahtou, if I had been any one else, do you believe that Major Kraver _would_ have accepted that appeal?"

For almost a minute, Harvan was entirely lost for words. His mind whirled its way through profiles and analysis, everything that he knew about Kraver, about his troops, trying to grasp at anything remotely resembling an answer. "I don't know," he admitted at last, "If you had been another, less . . . a lower ranking Imperial officer . . . perhaps . . . but I can't . . . I can't tell you for certain."

"I am one of the most hated figures in the Empire," Vader stated flatly, as blunt fact, "Kraver will not be the only member of the Rebellion to consider keeping me alive to be a crime. I doubt he will be the only one to try to execute me and anyone seen to be aiding me. I would not have Luke . . . Leia . . . anyone placed in danger because of that. Mr Sahtou – would the Rebel Alliance lose anything if I were to die now?"

The droid exploded into a bout of frantic twittering and bleeping, only stopping at another touch on its dome. Harvan goggled at them both. "Is this . . . is this why you wanted to talk to me?"

"I could not ask Luke. He would not answer, or would not answer honestly. He cares too much. And yet . . . I have given every secret I know. Everything that could help the Rebellion finally and complete succeed. There is nothing more that I can do except provoke anger and dissent in your ranks. If Luke were to die defending me, there would be no one left to teach Leia the ways of the Jedi. No one to teach those who will come next. No one to rebuild all that I destroyed. I _cannot_ let that happen. I am dying – I have been dying for a very long time. To cling to life regardless of the cost is the Sith way and I will not surrender to that again. Is there anything that could be gained by my continued existence?"

Wordlessly, Harvan shook his head, stopped, tried to remember to breath. "I can't . . . I can't answer that. I'm not . . . I'm not the kind of person who can answer that."

"Mr Sahtou, you are a man of greater insight than you give yourself credit for –"

"Because I listened to you?" Disbelief gave him the strength to actually cut over the end of the compliment. "Because I sat in front of you and tried to be dispassionate and neutral while you described your crimes? I . . . I can give you facts and figures if that's what you want. I can tell you how many people are working to keep you locked up here, how much that is costing the war effort, the number of soldiers who would likely die defending you from different kinds of assassins – or I could list the peoples in the Alliance who oppose death penalties for any crime, or those who might see your death as evidence that you had been quietly murdered so you couldn't cause all the problems you're afraid your causing, or I could suggest all the ways that the Empire could make you into some sort of martyr once you were safely gone and not likely to prove them wrong. I can give you theories and guesses and estimates – but I can't answer your question. I . . . I am a single military analyst – an _amateur_ military analyst. I'm not . . . I'm not Jedi or a leader or anyone who could ever make the call on something that big! I'm sorry . . . I can't argue you out of it if that is really what you believe. But I can't argue you into it either. I won't do either. I don't have the right."

Vader held his gaze. Artoo moaned, dome whirring one way then the other. Harvan's knuckles went white around the edge of his pad.

"You are not being honest to what you feel, Mr Sahtou."

"I don't trust my feelings. Not about this. I can't." He stood up. "I should leave. Any objectivity I have . . . any observations I could make now would not be valid."

"I do not believe that would be true."

"Forgive me if I don't – if I don't agree." Head down, skin prickling, Harvan stooped to pick up his recorder, fumbling it back inside his jacket.

He managed to get halfway to the door before his better judgement brought him to a halt. With considerable effort, he made himself turn back around. "I should . . . you should be aware that everything you said is on record now. I cannot edit it or redact any statements you may . . . may not wish to be widely known."

"I am not concerned by that, Mr Sahtou." The terrible voice was steady, unflinching, all emotion clamped down tightly, the mask's empty stare unwavering. "Share what you have learnt with whomsoever you wish. It will make no difference to me."

Trying very hard to avoid breaking into an actual run, Harvan fled.


	40. Chapter 40

"You look terrible," Disris told him when he got out of the cell.

Harvan did not try to explain. He wasn't entirely certain he could. The sergeant did not ask. She just regarded him coolly, though not unkindly, folded her arms and waited for him to stop trembling. When he did and started looking around for the Commander, she said, "The Princess showed up a few minutes ago and hauled Skywalker off to one of the duty lounges down there. Don't know if you want to go after them or not . . ."

He considered the prospect, weighing it against just leaving and running back to his cabin on the flagship. But he was there in the first place at Commander Skywalker's request and it would have been wrong to simply up and leave without a word. Even if he had no idea what that word would or could be.

"I'll go and find him. Them. Thank you."

Disris shrugged. "You might wish I hadn't told you."

The duty lounges, despite their name, were not intended for long periods of relaxation. Really they were little more than a store from which to grab food during shift changes or duck into when you needed a quiet word with someone. This one had been re-purposed from one of those small, oddly-shaped chambers all starships seemed to have, where the clash between internal layout and functional mechanics hiccuped up a space with no particular practical purpose. It was down a short side-corridor and at some point, the door had become warped in such a way as to be permanently stuck two-thirds open.

The upshot of which was that Harvan heard the argument before he walked in on it and froze, mortified, just out of sight of the room's occupants.

"If I could just show you, you'd be able to see how different he is now," Commander Skywalker was saying, an edge of strain creeping into his voice, "You're as strong in the Force as I am, at least. I'm sure you'd be able to pick it up quickly, then you'd see it too –"

"Luke . . ." There was a sigh in the Princess' reply. "We've been through this. Even if I wasn't sure I'm in exactly the wrong frame of mind to begin Jedi training, I don't have the time to do it justice."

"But if you could just sense it –"

"Luke. I believe you. If you say he's changed now, I believe you. If you tell me he's Anakin, that he's found some piece of light somewhere under all that armour, I believe you."

"But . . . but if you do . . . why do you –"

"Because it doesn't _change_ anything. It doesn't change anything. All it means is that Anakin Skywalker helped betray the Republic to the Emperor. Even if he's no longer a dark Jedi or the Emperor's fist, even if he's just sitting quietly in a cell thinking about what he's done, he's still responsible for every crime Darth Vader committed. Every atrocity."

"He regrets it so deeply – the guilt, the pain it's causing him –"

"Good!"

From the sharp silence that followed, Harvan assumed the sharpness took Commander Skywalker aback as well. It was a moment before Princess Organa spoke again. "If he didn't feel guilty, I'd know you were wrong about him changing. Guilt is something you're _supposed_ to feel when you've done terrible things! What _you_ want is for someone to help ease his guilt. Well, I'm sorry but that isn't going to be me. Even if I believed that he feels guilty for everything he did, which I'm far from convinced he does, that doesn't mean I'm obliged to forgive him."

Whatever Skywalker replied to that, he did so too quietly for Harvan to hear. "I know I've tried to explain how strong the Dark Side can be," he continued, back at normal volume, "A Jedi opens themselves to the Force and feels everything – the darkness can be so intense it's overwhelming. I've felt that –"

"And you turned away from it. You decided you'd rather die than fall. Twice! Vader, Anakin – he was a fully trained Jedi knight sworn to defend the Republic and he chose to join the Emperor. _Chose_. He didn't just stumble into slaughtering hundreds of people."

"He – he thought he was doing the right thing."

"How? How could he possibly have believed that?"

The Commander seemed to have no answer for her. Deciding that he had eavesdropped for more than long enough, Harvan lifted his hand to rap on the door and announce his presence. He did not manage to complete the motion before the Princess said, more gently, "I know all the arguments. I know that the Emperor manipulated him, just like he manipulated everyone else. But somewhere along the line, Vader made a choice and we – _I_ have been living with the consequences of that choice too long to be able to shrug it off. And I know you want to help him, just like you want to help everyone, to be the Jedi Obi Wan Kenobi believed you could be. I understand that. I love that about you. But bringing me into a room with Vader won't help him. He'll be able to sense how I feel about him, even if I can't do the same for him. And I don't want to hurt him just because I can, no matter how angry I am. That would be pointless."

"Leia . . ." Commander Skywalker began, "I . . ."

"You can come in now, Mr Sahtou," the Princess called before he could get further.

Harvan bit his lip to stop from giving a startled yelp.

"It is Mr Sahtou out there, isn't it? Yes I thought so." She threw her brother a tight smile as Harvan came in. "Perhaps your training's starting to rub off on me anyway."

"I – I'm very sorry – I certainly didn't mean to – I should have –"

"Calm done," the Princess ordered curtly, "It's fine. If we didn't want to be overheard we should have taken this somewhere with a working door. Besides, I'd say it all in front of a hundred witnesses if I had to."

Somehow, that did not make Harvan feel any better.

"You've finished?" Skywalker asked anxiously.

"Y-yes sir. I . . . I think so." His hand went to the recorder inside his tunic. "If you'd like to view the recording before I, ah, do the write up . . . ?"

"No, that's OK. It's more important you treat this exactly the same as you did with the rest of the interviews."

"Not that you should be ever have been asked to continue." The Princess gave Skywalker another look, this one far less pleased. "I came here as soon as I heard my brother had pulled you away from your work, Harvan. I want to assure you it won't happen again."

"I . . . thank you, your highness, although I was led to understand it was a request, not an order."

"You should ever have been asked. That's what we were discussing before we – moved on. You're under absolutely no obligation to have anything more to do with all this."

Harvan bowed. "If you'll forgive me, I should write up my final set of notes. If that is all right."

The Princess nodded back. "Of course. We appreciate that. Thank you."

The three of them stood there for a few seconds more than was comfortable, saying nothing.

"I, ah, should get back to the flagship. Ah. If you'll excuse me, your highness, sir?" Harvan backed out of the room as fast as was seemly. And then, like some absurd replay of ten minutes previously, found himself stopping before he had made good his escape. "If you'll, ah, forgive me, Commander Skywalker, sir? I think you should, um, should probably go and talk to your father."

And again, he fled.

* * *

 _A quick note: This is all I have finished as of now and I am going to be going away for a few days, so the next update will be in a week's time. Sorry for another unscheduled break in transmission!_


	41. Chapter 41

_AN:_

 _One thousand apologies for the abrupt and extended break in transmission. I ended up with no chapter buffer and no idea how to fill up the next five or six chapters. Fortunately, both these issues have been somewhat remedied. Unfortunately - well, sort of - I'm going to be busy wandering around the Thought Bubble convention in Leeds this weekend so normal service will not be resumed until next week, I'm afraid._

 _In good news, however, there are only a handful more chapters to write, so this story should be finished by Christmas. I really, really hope._

 _And now we take you back to our scheduled nervous breakdown . . ._

* * *

He was not precisely unused to being awoken by loud noises. It was a hazard of being part of a revolution. That loud noise was just not usually someone banging franticly on his cabin door.

Harvan prised his head from the surface of his desk, wincing at the stiffness in his neck. "Wait a minute," he called out, trying to forestall more thumping until he could reach the door. The words came out badly slurred and not remotely loud enough to be effective. Giving up, he tottered over and slapped at the open control. It took him a couple of tries to hit it.

Zun blinked up at him. [Kaitis sent me to check you weren't dead. Are you?]

Harven pressed the puffed flesh under his eyes. "I'm not sure. Ask me again later." He retreated back inside, holding the door open. Zun followed him in, looking around curiously.

He stopped when he saw the disjointed, fragmentary hologram Harvan had fallen asleep in front of. [What kind of crazy mixed up visual spectrum is that supposed to be keyed to?]

"A Jedi's, I suppose. It was ripped from a holocron found a couple of years ago. Allegedly. On the strength of this, I'm not convinced."

[Fake?]

"Holocrons are supposed to be impossible to copy by conventional means. I thought a recording of a projection might have worked but if this really is one, it's so badly corrupted as to be unusable. Which would be fair enough if it weren't for the fact that the few recoverable fragments are exactly the sort of thing you would expect to hear a Jedi say."

[Fake.] Zun scratched his ear. [Why were you looking at it anyway? More to do with . . . you know.]

Yawning and scrubbing at his eyes, Harvan took his time answering. "Yes and no," he settled on eventually.

[Yes and no? What's that supposed to mean?]

"That it's not anything official or anything anyone's asked me to do but yes it is connected to Vader."

[Obviously. Uh. Like . . . how?]

"I . . . was trying to find some record of Jedi death rites. Of how a Jedi is supposed to die."

[Uh huh. And why are you doing that?]

"You know what?" He dropped on to the edge of his bunk. "I have absolutely no idea."

[All right . . .] Zun took the chair and put his chin on his hand. [Blade told us you'd finished your special assignment. Properly this time. But you're back to hiding away in here any time you're off duty and you don't get this obsessive over unimportant things, so . . . why is this important?]

"Aren't you the one who always ribbed me for wasting time, ah, obsessing over trivia?"

[And each and every damn time that trivia turned out to be important and life-saving. I can recognise a pattern when it hits me in the face. So come on. Why are you interested in 'how a Jedi is supposed to die'?]

Suppressing another yawn, Harvan shut his eyes and leant his head back against the bulkhead. The cool of the metal reached through his hair and prickled his skin. "Do you want to kill Darth Vader?" he asked.

[I don't want Darth Vader to kill _me_. I'm not about to pull a Kraver or anything though.]

"You rebelled against the Empire because of what they did to Sullest, right?"

[Yeah. They tore up my home and turned it into a weapons factory. But that had nothing to do with Vader. Look, I'd have shot him, or tried to but now he's locked up, going to go on trial? Isn't that what we're fighting for?]

"And if he died in custody, right now – what would you think?"

[That it couldn't have happened to a better person? I don't know – that he'd just dropped dead at last. He's not wearing that suit for fun, right?]

"You wouldn't suspect foul play?"

[What, that Mon Mothma went over and killed him in his sleep? Does he even sleep? I don't know . . . maybe. I wouldn't think the Alliance command had ordered it done, not when they're making all this fuss about getting him put in front of all the worlds who support us.] Giving a quick laugh, Zun added, [Anyway, Skywalker'd be pretty ticked off if they killed his daddy, wouldn't he? They don't want to lose his support now everyone knows he's a real Jedi after all.]

"Would you ever think that Vader did it himself?"

[Eh?]

"He's permanently stuck inside that armour, half the galaxy wants to kill him, rebels and Imperials, and on top of all that he can sense exactly what everyone thinks of him." Harvan spread his hands. "People with less reason have died by their own hand."

[Yeah but so what? Knowing what people think of him never bothered him before, did it?] Zun pushed the chair around, then back the other way, frowning. [Did it?]

Harvan did not really have an answer to that. He dithered into unresponsiveness.

Letting it slide, Zun pulled them back to the point. [What does any of this have to do with Jedi death rites, anyway? You looking for signs that Vader might off himself?]

"I . . . I'm looking for something that might convince him not to." Harvan spread his fingers across his knees. "Some bit of Jedi philosophy or teachings that I could find for Commander Skywalker that might . . . help. Not that I have. I just feel I might. If I dig deep enough."

[Feel or hope? Hey, look.] Zun pushed himself up. [This isn't like you. You don't go after things just because you _feel_ they're going to be useful. I know you're a genius at number crunching and data mining but this – ? He waved at the hologram. Hiding away and falling asleep staring at this kind of nonsense? What's _wrong_?]

"I, uh, thought if there was something that meant a Jedi should fulfil their obligations before –"

[Harvan!]

"He asked me if there was any reason for him to stay alive!" It came out halfway to a shout. "If – if there was any reason for him not to let go and – and . . ." He caught himself, biting off the rest of the words bubbling in his throat.

[And I'm assuming you didn't just say 'no' like anyone sane?]

"You think I didn't want to? If Vader j-just . . . w-went away – do you know how relieved I'd be? Not to have him hanging over the Alliance any more – I want that! I want to be able to focus on actually winning the war, not watching everyone's lives distort around one man!" Harvan loosed his grip on his kneecaps somewhat, light-headed from having it all come exploding out. "I want him gone. Why wouldn't I?"

Zun waggled a thumb under his jowls. ['Cos of all that stuff about everyone thinking we'd murdered him in his cell?] he suggested, [Because, hey, you're not on the side of the people who're OK with their enemies 'just dying'! I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd still be perfectly fine with him conking out in the night. But I get why this would . . . um. Make you go crazy and try and prevent it.]

"That's . . . that's not . . . ah . . ." Digging the balls of his hands into his eye-sockets did not help Harvan's ability to express himself. He tried it for a few moments anyway. "That's not why I . . . that's not it. Not really. I . . . if he dies – by his own hand or anyone else's – before he faces the people the Empire oppressed, without facing some sort of justice – then what was the point? All those people he killed or caused to be killed – what is the point of any of this if he never gets held to account for snuffing them out? They mattered! Their lives mattered! That's the point! That's why the Rebellion exists! To say no to the Empire. To refuse to accept that people, species, whole worlds can just be brushed aside by those in power! For as long as he's been Darth Vader, the Empire's treated him as more important than anyone he destroyed! That's what the Empire _does_. And everyone else – they're just numbers on a screen somewhere! And if he gets a choice to avoid any consequence of what he's done, if he just _dies_ , he's gotten away with it again! It's all still about him, about what he _chooses_ to allow! I sat there and listened to him describe every purge and every execution and you know what? I want to hear all that read back to him, I want to hear him _accused_ and to be judged for _what he did_. Not for who he is or-or _what_ he is but for what he _did_! Because it matters! Because the names behind those numbers matter!"

Lowering his trembling hands, Harvan focused his blurring eyes on Zun's face. "I don't want to kill him. I don't want to tell him to die. Because I'm just one person. One person alone. I don't have that right. No _one person_ does. That's the point. That's entirely the point."

[OK,] Zun said quietly, [OK . . .] He walked over to where Harvan was sitting and put a hand on his shoulder. [You're going to come with me down to the mess and get a good meal – OK, a meal – and not think about all this for a while.]

"But, I –"

[Nope. No argument.] Taking a firm grip on Harvan's arm, he hauled him upright. [I'm not just going to sit and watch you fly to pieces for no good reason.]

"You think it's for no good reason? R-really? After everything that's . . . you don't think this is important?" There was more heat in the question than Harvan had meant there to be, which he regretted immediately.

Zun took it in his stride. ['Course it's important. You're just not going to solve everything on your own. Or is your name secretly 'Skywalker' too? Not that I'd be surprised if we had another of those hanging around somewhere . . .]

Harvan's head spun with adrenaline and vertigo. "I'm not . . . I'm not trying to fix everything on my own, I'm . . . I want to . . . if I can do something, I have to try –"

[Later. Maybe after a decent night's sleep. All right?] Keeping tight hold, Zun guided him gently to the door. [Definitely after food. And a shower.]

"All . . . all right." They passed the deck and on an angry impulse Harvan stuck out his hand and swiped at the holo-projector. Then he let the engineer pull him away.

Behind them, the fake recording flickered off.


	42. Chapter 42

"Tell Rogue Leader he's feeding us visual data that doesn't match his sensor readings," Blade snapped while S-6 frantically spooled through ship recognition charts, "so at this point he'd better start assuming his scopes are useless."

"Data streaming to countermeasures team," the Mon Cal at the next console acknowledged, "Cutting in feeds from Gold and Green squadrons."

" _New contact, oh four by six two!"_ boomed Rogue Three's voice from the central monitor, _"Assault shuttle and escort. Make it . . . thirty Squints in englobing positions!"_

The tactical chamber bubbled with chatter and data, the hum of active systems and excited people rising to match the sound of _Home-One_ coming to battle-readiness around them. The deck rang with hurrying feet, the bulkheads with power. All along the flagship's immense hull, view ports were sealing and batteries were charging up. The whole fleet was shifting and reforming, moving into defensive formation. The Alliance, baring its teeth in the face of the enemy.

Three star destroyers bore down on them, trailing a cloud of small ships, coming in hard with guns blazing. They had arrayed themselves at the points of a triangle, angled to bring the maximum possible firepower to bear on their targets. At first estimates, it looked as though they intended to pummel everything they could with heavy turbolasers, opening up anything that survived to be picked off by their attendant corvettes – an unconventional strategy that went against the received wisdom of how to deploy capital ships, one worthy of the Alliance's own reckless tacticians.

Admiral Ackbar barked orders across the fleet-wide channels, anticipating and guarding against the apparent Imperial strategy and the numerous alternatives it could be cover for. His orders on the bridge were repeated in the central display, mirrored in turn by the ships they were directing.

Harvan glanced up at the icon representing _Fidelity_ , watching it spin into the middle of a protective ring of battle cruiser. Like _Redemption_ and the other support vessels, the crew would be busy charging their hyperdrive, ready to fall back and escape if they got the chance. A whole fully-armed frigate relegated to a defensive position . . .

His attention snapped back to the screen in front of him as the computer highlighted another string of identifying marks on the second star destroyer. As they got closer, it was easier to make out the details – registration marks, patterns in the hull plates, battle-damage and indications of repair – all things that made this ship distinct from any other of its class. And if they knew which ship it was, they would be able to look for advantages based on previous encounters, intelligence about the crew or simply on the mechanical make-up of the individual vessel. Perhaps the captain would have a known tendency to grandstanding. Or the port shield projectors would have a tendency to misalign when under stress. That was the theory anyway. Harvan was a little unclear on how useful it was. He's often suspected it was a tactic born of desperation, blind hope and the need for the slightest advantage rather than one with a sound basis behind it.

Still, it was better than sitting around doing nothing while turbolaserfire rained down.

The deck rumbled as the forefront of the star destroyers' barrage reached them. Already, the Imperials were being forced to alter their formation thanks to bombardment from a quartet of Alliance cruisers but this had yet to deter them from their attack vector. Doing his level best not to think about the amount of energy battering against _Home-One_ 's barriers, Harvan cut in a second level of software, focusing in on the firing patterns.

"Falcon _calling flagship."_ General Solo's communication cut through the hubbub mainly thanks to how loudly he was shouting, _"These are not your normal TIE fighters out here – will someone please tell me why half of them are bright red?"_

" _They're the colours of the Imperial Guard,"_ General Cracken responded almost at once, _"Palpatine's hand-picked elite. We might well be looking at a suicide flight here – intent on causing maximum damage with no plans on coming out alive."_

" _There's something strange about some of the other squints,"_ Rogue Leader cut in, _"The ones that aren't red I mean. They're flying like nothing I've ever seen before and – anybody got a clean look at those markings of theirs?"_

" _Yeah, I saw 'em,"_ Solo confirmed, _"Can't place 'em but they looked familiar. Flagship, you got anything?"_

"Processing now, General." Blade gestured frantically at S-6 and Lieutenant Palmeri. They sprang into action, the droid plugging in to a different part of the databanks, the Rodian switching the holo-projector to show large-scale images taken from the Millennium _Falcon_ 's readouts. In his peripheral vision, Harvan caught glimpses of TIE interceptor radiators, flashes of scarlet and grey-blue steel, curling white symbols looping across black panels.

The analysis completed its run and produced two possibilities for the star destroyer's identity: _V_ _ituperation_ or _Despoiler_. He started cutting in other filters, known Imperial fleet movements, related intelligence reports, deployment probabilities – anything that might narrow the field further. None of it proved particularly helpful. In this case, hope and desperation looked like they wouldn't be enough.

{Got it!} Palmeri shouted excitedly, {Here, comparison with intelligence reports from last month . . . and seven years ago. Partial match on one, total match on another – symbols are insignia for the Imperial . . . Inquisition . . .}

"Great stars . . ." Blade breathed into the dead silence that followed. Her hand slammed down on the comm controls, activating the direct channel used for urgent tactical updates. "Admiral, Generals – the TIEs out there appear to belong to the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Inquisition. Repeat, we appear to be facing Imperial Guard and Inquisition forces."

" _Understood, Lieutenant,"_ Ackbar acknowledged gruffly, _"All ships and wings, be advised: there are elite Imperial forces in play. Red group, Phoenix group, move to reinforce Rogue group immediately._ Resolute _,_ Resplendent _, angle point four oh and prepare for point defence –"_

{What does the Inquisition want with us?} Palmeri demanded as the Admiral rumbled out his orders, {How is there even still an Inquisition – and didn't they just hunt down Jedi? Is that it? Have they come for Skywalker?}

"It is feasible that this is simply equipment that has been co-opted by another Imperial faction," S-6 noted calmly.

" _We've lost Green Leader!"_ barked Green Four suddenly, _"We need more support here!"_

" _This is Red Leader, we're right on you, moving to engage – holy – !"_

" _How the hell – Rogue Two, watch your back – two squints moving to flank you."_

" _This is the_ Falcon _– will someone get these crazies off my back? Damn – TIEs aren't supposed to fly like this!"_

" _Rogue Leader to all wings, execute scatter manoeuvre four."_

S-6's photoreceptors flickered. "Of course, the evidence may not support that theory."

"Calm down." Blade touched Palmeri's shoulder, once, quickly. "Jovens, get a vector plot on that assault shuttle – I don't want it getting lost in all this."

"On it."

"Pal, get me everything we have on the types of combat ships assigned to the Imperial Guard. That looks like a standard D-53 but I want capacity, load-out and boarding capabilities."

{I – right. Yes. Sure. On it.}

"Cardith . . ."

That made Harvan look up again. Kav Jovens was one of Blade's oldest friends but to the best of Harvan's knowledge, he hardly ever called her by her first name.

One glance at the projector showed why he did so now. Curves and vectors spun around the assault shuttle's icon, predicted paths extrapolated from the movements of the ship itself and the fighters around it, arcing through the fleet – and converging on the frigate _Fidelity_.

The Inquisition was not coming for Commander Skywalker. It was coming for Darth Vader.


	43. Chapter 43

Kaitis lifted her bottle. "To Badan Urr. Best damn engineer in the fleet. May their shadow be cast over their enemies and their light stay with us always."

"To Badan Urr!" the room echoed.

She sat down and a dresselian stood up, hoisting an over-flowing goblet toward the ceiling. "Toast Madrogad, terror of Tertis Prime! He died as he lived – with his hands around a Stormtrooper's throat!"

"To Madrogad!"

So it went on. The litany of the dead, toasted regardless of who they had been or what they had done. They had given their lives for the Alliance. A drink and a moment's remembrance was the least they deserved.

[You knew him a long time, didn't you?] Zun put his arm across Kaitis' shoulders and hugged her for a second.

"Eleven years. He taught me how to rebuild speeder motors back on Stellas. Showed me how to sneak engine parts past the Imperial scans. How to make food and water last for days." She swigged from the bottle again. "I'll miss the old sot."

{Stupid way to go,} Palmeri muttered into her bowl, {Damn unlucky hit like that.}

[That's shield regulators for you – always that one spot they can't keep in sync.]

"And you always hope no one's going to be able to target it . . . but war's stupid like that."

{Always some kid able to nail the impossible shot.}

"To Serin Pell!" roared the room around them.

Kaitis gave a slightly out of focus frown. "I know that name. Harv, why do I know that name?"

"He was one of the Y-wing pilots who pulled us off Stellas after Bertun gave away our safe-house locations." Harvan glanced up from his datapad and reached for his glass. "Got transferred to Blue Squadron a couple of years ago. Decorated for bravery after the evacuation of Zento City. Reckoned to have been hit more times than any other surviving fighter in the battle but somehow managed to keep flying and take down a whole flight of Imperial bombers."

"Oh yeah. I remember him now. He was a complete spanner. Didn't I break his nose?"

"Sorry. That's not in the official records."

"I think I did . . ." Kaitis stared into her bottle for a long moment, then shrugged and tipped it slightly. "To Serin Pell."

{You're not still working are you?} Palmeri wondered as Harvan went back to his pad.

[You hold him down, I'll take that thing away from him,] Zun proposed, putting his beaker to one side.

"It's not work –" Harvan leaned away from Palmeri's outstretched hands. "I'm just looking over some of the data from the battle. I was . . . ah, curious about some of the details. I . . ."

"Is that Skywalker?" Kaitis demanded.

[No, it's some other human with a glowy green stick. Of course it's kriffing Skywalker!]

"And the guy with the red glowy stick?"

"An Imperial Inquisitor," Harvan told her, accepting that he was not just going to be allowed to carry on in peace, "No name given."

"That's an Inquisitor?" She squinted. "Right . . . kind of glad we didn't come up against _that_ on Stellas. What's with the tattoos?"

"Symbols of adherence to the dark side of the Force presumably. That's what I've been assuming."

{Dark side of the Force . . .} Palmeri's words faded to bubbles for a moment as she raised her bowl to her snout. {What does that even mean?}

[Evil creepy people with evil creepy powers,] Zun summarised, [That's right, isn't it Sahtou?]

"Um . . . I suppose so. It seems to be about anger and hatred rather than . . . ah, the rest of the Force, I assume. I'm not sure."

{You spend however long talking to Vader and you don't know how the dark side's supposed to work?}

"We weren't . . . talking philosophy. Even when we discussed it, I'm not really sure I understood how . . . it seems to be focussed on anger, on giving into anger and drawing strength from it."

"Anger at what?" Kaitis asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Anything. Everything. I'm not sure it needed to be about any one thing in particular . . . I'm not sure."

"Well that's dumb. You can't just _be angry_ all the time! That's like . . . seeing only the colour blue or something! Anger's supposed to burn up and go away! That's just what it _does_!" She slammed her bottle down on the table. "Then you get on with the rest of your life."

[I dunno – anger can be useful and it can stay.] Zun scratched his ear. [I mean, we're all here because we're angry at the Empire, right?]

"Exactly! We're angry _at_ the Empire – we're not just pointlessly angry."

"I'm not saying . . . I don't mean he's . . . angry about nothing. I'm just not sure that was really the point." Harvan tried to work out what he was trying to explain. "It seemed like he was addicted to this . . . method of getting power until Commander Skywalker reached through to him."

{He was addicted to being evil? Is that supposed to be a joke?}

[Yeah, I got to tell you, it's not very funny.]

"Then perhaps you had better get the Commander to explain it because I'm clearly not doing a good job. Sorry."

Harvan grabbed for his own glass again. The others looked in three different directions. "To Vanis Chem!" bellowed everyone around them.

"It _is_ easy to let anger get the better of your." Kaitis flip-flopped her hand. "I can see that. I just don't see how anyone could stay angry for that long."

[Hn. You ask me, he's going to need a better defence than 'I was addicted to being angry' . . .]

{Can we talk about something else?} Palmeri complained shrilly, {I don't want to think about Vader. Why are you even looking at that stuff, Harv?}

He turned the pad around to show them the next few images, mid-battle stills of stormtroopers in bright red armour cutting a path through _Fidelity_ 's hallways. "General Madine wants a best-guess analysis of how much equipment involved in that attack can be linked to these rumours of Imperial special-ops teams vanishing. Wants an idea of how much was used up and how much is unaccounted for. I thought I'd make a start and I, ah, got a little distracted by some of comparisons between this Inquistior and Vad –"

"So it is work!" Kaitis exploded. She grabbed the pad from him, scowled at it accusingly then whacked him gently over the head with it.

"Ow," he said automatically.

"No more work," she ordered firmly, handing the pad to Zun, who shrugged and promptly gave it back to Harvan.

"Message received." Harvan switched it off and put it on the table. "Better?"

"Better. Good. We're supposed to be celebrating! Another glorious victory!"

"To Falsao D'morth!" yelled the room. By Harvan's tally, it was the forty-second toast drunk since they'd arrived in the rec-room. The count did not look to be stopping any time soon. But he added his voice to the chorus and drank anyway.

"To Finn Makin!"

Because after all, they'd won again. Hadn't they?


	44. Chapter 44

"You're not being called to testify but they want you on hand in case they need you to clarify anything from your work with Vader." Madine handed him a command cylinder. "This will activate at a prearranged time and provide you with your travel orders. Standard security rules apply. Any attempt to access the contents before the set time will trigger a destruct sequence, set off an alarm signal and wipe the data completely, all the usual trappings. I'm obliged to tell you that, obviously." The General rubbed his jaw. "Like as not you'll just be sitting around as an observer for the duration."

Harvan nodded. "Understood, sir. If I may ask, do you know how many worlds will be represented?"

"Twenty three confirmed so far. Several more are working on arrangements for their delegations to get through Imperial controlled space. It's going to be one giant target for anyone interested in making our lives miserable."

"Is the Empire aware of what is happening?"

"If they are, they haven't visibly tipped their hand yet. Not the larger factions anyway. We're monitoring the potential sites for activity of course. Cracken and the intelligence wings are working over time to spread misinformation so hopefully we'll either keep the Empire paralysed for the duration or get them to waste forces on wild felunk chases." A darker expression flitted across Madine's face. "How that's going to work if there are more 'Force sensitives' out there, I don't know."

Rolling the cylinder across his hand, Harvan thought back to the images recorded during the attack: the near-skeletal Inquisitor, eyes blazing almost the same colour as the lightsaber in their hand, moving with fearsome intention and striking with incredible ferocity. How many more, he wondered, were out there, waiting to follow in Vader's footsteps? Or seeking revenge on him for betraying their kind. "Has . . . has the, ah, prisoner said anything?"

The General shook his head. "Nothing. I'm bowing to Skywalker's superior wisdom and getting them as far away from the fleet as possible. One dark lord is quite enough."

"Has . . ." Harvan thought better of the question even before he had voiced it.

Madine looked across at him quizzically.

"I'm sorry – ah, I simply wondered if . . . if Commander Skywalker had mentioned how . . . whether the Inquisitor's presence had affected his father?"

"Hm. I would make a comment about how tenaciously you cling to your work even when it's over but then I have just told you that you can't walk away yet. No. Not exactly. He stated that this 'dark-side' user's presence was almost tangible for him and the Princess expressed similar concerns. If Vader can sense that too – and I'm assuming he can, whatever it really is – it has not been mentioned as a factor. What he apparently _did_ tell Skywalker was that having the Inquisitor here would make it far easier for other Inquisitors, should they exist, to track the fleet."

"Ah . . . and they could definitely trade that ability for favour with various Imperial factions."

"That being what we assume allowed them to get three star destroyer captains to arrange that little diversion for them. Yes." The General's brow creased thoughtfully. "No wonder Vader warned us, given they can probably track him too."

Harvan closed his fingers around the cylinder and half nodded. He could hear the assumption in Madine's words, that Vader was worried about being hunted by his former acolytes. But no. That was not it. If Vader was concerned, it was only for his children and the risk of their being harmed by those seeking vengeance on him. And it struck Harvan all at once how perverse it was to have so much power, so much influence, to do anything you wanted – only to find that that was exactly what put the things you actually cared about in danger.

That was the corollary to the injustice Vader represented. The Empire's favouring of the few over the many, the dark side obsession with singular strength the Emperor's teachings seemed to have represented – all Vader had ever wanted lay on the other side of the equation. His wife. His friends. His son. His daughter. In the end, all his actions had ever achieved was to break and threaten each and every one of them. Even now, after understanding had dawned and he had turned away from the monster he had become, those shadows hung long and dark over him. They would until the end of his life.

"Sahtou?" Madine asked.

Harvan snapped back to the here and now. "Ah, sorry sir. Just . . . thinking. Um. Is there anything else I need to know about the, uh, arrangements?"

"I don't believe so. You'll be told more when it's time. Until then, just carry on with your normal duties."

"Yes sir." He rose and came to attention. "Thank you sir."

"Say that again when it's all over. Dismissed."


	45. Chapter 45

Not having a definite time-scale for when the trial would begin meant Harvan spent the next few weeks in a state of distraction. It took a determined effort to avoid falling back into obsessive circular thoughts. He dreaded the times when he was off-duty, unable to pour his attention into something worthwhile. More and more, he took to working through meals and shift breaks, only stopping to sleep – and badly at that. In a few absurd moments, Harvan was almost grateful for the Empire's continued refusal to lay down and die. There was at least a lot of work to do.

Not that he was the only person disturbed by the impending proceedings. An army of recorder droids flooded through the fleet, seeking out witnesses to the purges on Ryloth or Serreno, the massacres on Malastare or Tyni, the genocides on Callos and Geonosis – rebels, civilians, defectors, anyone who had been there when the Emperor's Fist struck. Bad memories were being stirred up on every ship, among every crew. People were starting to groan at the recorders' approach, even ducking around out of sight to put off the inevitable a few hours longer. Dark mutterings rippled out with every new interview, souring moods from ground crews up to crack pilots. Even droids glitched and moaned as they were asked to replay data from the atrocities they had seen. General Madine was far from the only ranking officer to be found stalking through the flag-ship under a storm cloud.

Harvan hoped that it would be worth it. He could imagine the contents of those recordings all too well. Likely they would be joining a thousand other such accounts collated by the peoples who would stand in judgement over Vader. A stream of voices bearing witness to the dark lord's wrath and fury, his viciousness and cruelty, his callousness and disinterest. And in there somewhere would be Vader's own voice, damning himself just as thoroughly as the rest.

In a quiet moment while waiting for a particularly complex algorithm to run, Harvan caught himself wondering what Senator Amidala would have made of it all. He was sure that seeing the galaxy consumed in civil war would have horrified her. All her struggles to save lives and end the devastation of inhabited worlds come to nothing. Surely too it would have broken her heart to see her son forced to take the lives of thousands to save billions. Though perhaps that was simply him projecting his own feelings. She had been a senator, had certainly understood the mathematics of war well enough to launch blistering attacks on it. Maybe when it came down to it, she would have been right there alongside her daughter, ensuring the destruction of the Empire's super-weapons and all aboard. Harvan did not doubt for one moment that she would have been shoulder to shoulder with Mon Mothma, striving to pull some sort of future from the soulless monolith of the Empire.

And Vader? She must have loved him. Harvan could not imagine a Jedi falling for someone whose emotions were not genuine, no matter how inclined they might be to see only what they wanted to see. He hoped that was true. Would that love have lasted in the face of what her husband had become? It was an impossible question to answer. He knew nothing about her on a personal level, at least nothing beyond the little Vader himself had described. That _he_ had loved _her_ was not something Harvan doubted either – though how close that love towed to the same obsession he showed towards his son . . .

Would she have forgiven him? Would she have raised a voice in his defence? Or would she have turned away from him in horror at what he had become for – in his mind at least – her sake?

They were impossible hypotheticals. The kind he despised as running so utterly contrary to reality as to be essentially useless for any practical analysis. Senator Amidala's death was one of the cornerstones of Anakin Skywalker's transformation into Darth Vader. If she had survived, perhaps there never would have been a Darth Vader. Or perhaps her presence would have made no difference and the dark side's lure would have proved just as strong. There was no way to tell.

It was hard to keep from wondering. Even wishing. But ultimately, the universe was as it was. Padme Amidala's loss was a tragedy, robbing the galaxy of a driven, compassionate woman who had been a force for good in dark times. Wishing it undone was natural but ultimately like all the atrocities the people of the fleet were reliving, and all the many more the Empire had committed without Vader's help, however avoidable it had been at the time, here and now it was a fact.

And all of them, rebel, Jedi, dark lord and all, would have to face the consequences as best they could.


	46. Chapter 46

They all noticed when the Inquisitor was transferred out of the fleet. The moment the transport entered hyperspace, it was as if a weight – previously unnoticed – had been lifted from the backs of everyone's minds. Harvan distinctly heard several people across the tactical chamber give relieved sighs and when he glanced up, he caught sight of them frowning in confusion. It was only later that he put that together with his own abrupt ease of mind and the daily fleet movements.

Surprise was not quite the right word for the realisation. It was very much as though he had simply put into words something he had known all along. Was that how the Force worked, or how it felt? Unspoken sensations and notions, or raw animal understanding? Not for the first time, he wished he had access to some more substantial portion of Jedi philosophy. Or even the 'Sith'. Something to give context to what he was witnessing.

As it was, he just had the bald facts. The Inquisitor disarmed and taken prisoner by Commander Skywalker during the Imperial assault on _Fidelity_ had spent most of their time in some sort of trance, barely responding to attempts to ascertain the reasons for the attack or, really, anything of value. After two intelligence officers suffered severe anxiety attacks while attempting an interrogation, direct contact was restricted to Skywalker himself. Who proceeded to have no better luck in getting a single word from the prisoner.

Perhaps that had something to do with the solid-state restraints the engineering team rigged up to hold someone capable of telekinetic manipulation of moving parts. They were unlikely to be very comfortable. But perhaps the general lack of reaction the Inquisitor displayed were just a symptom of some greater effort, some sorcerous working to undermine the fleet's effectiveness. Perhaps they simply could not spare the energy to break their silence.

Some days it seemed Harvan lived his life swimming in a sea of 'perhaps' and 'maybe', fighting for the context or evidence that would pin them into certainty. Anything touching on the Force tripled the strength of that feeling.

He did not think he was alone in that. The Empire was a tangible, comprehensible enemy. For all it was vast and fearsome, it was built on metal and soldiers – physical threats that could be fought on their own terms. Even the Death Star was a feat of military and industrial might, one unmatched in the history of civilised space, true, but still quantifiable. It could be broken down into components and as had been so conclusively proved, it was vulnerable to ordinary means and methods. But a mystical energy field permeating all matter, which could be manipulated in order to produce effects ranging from moving objects remotely to distorting perceptions and emotions? What were you supposed to do when faced with that? With people who could use that?

The Empire had destroyed what it could and suborned the rest. Palpitane seemed to have been determined, as in all things, to keep such power solely for his chosen elite and by and large – with the one obvious exception – the Empire's dark Jedi had contented themselves merely with destroying their counterparts. That had the effect of making it generally unlikely for the average member of the Alliance to have had any contact whatsoever with those empowered by the Force. The means by which such people could safely be contained were opaque and shrouded in rumour. In all probability, the Empire's means would be beyond the pale in any case.

So how was the Alliance supposed to deal with beings like the Inquisitors? They had enough trouble with normal prisoners: for most of their existence, they had simply not been in a position to hold any more than a few captives at once and even then, not for any length of time. When you were often barely able to feed yourself or find enough shelter to sleep safely at night, basic practicality forbade any thoughts of holding your enemies against their will. It was new territory to have to find some means of housing large numbers of surrendering Imperial troops. There was talk of having to let many of them go, a proposition that was not as crazy as it sounded given how many Imperial crewers were conscripts, forced into unwanted military careers. Hopefully many of those from worlds freed by the Alliance would take the opportunity to return home. And, of course, the Alliance's ranks already included many hundred defectors.

Would any of the Jedi hunters and dark acolytes be content to return to the worlds they had come from or set down their laser swords in favour of farming equipment?

The more Harvan thought about, the more he appreciated how fortunate they were not to have needed to hold Vader against his will. He could not imagine such an attempt ending any other way than in Vader's violent death. If they were incredibly lucky.

Perhaps Vader himself knew how to neutralise Force-users safely. It must have been something the Jedi of the Old Republic had known. Although not necessarily all of them. And maybe Vader would keep such knowledge to himself in any case, for fear it might be turned on his children.

Leaving the Alliance with no guidance on how to deal with people who's very presence acted like a pressure on the minds of all around them, save for the advice of Commander Skywalker, who was more experienced than the rest of them with Force-users but not with coping with Force-users in a wider community. It gave Harvan visions of the young Jedi rushing around the galaxy from one crisis to the next, desperately trying to solve everything single-handed. He hoped that was just a fevered exaggeration. The last thing anyone needed was the sole-surviving Jedi driven to an early grave by personally confronting every manifestation of the 'dark side' without any kind of back-up.

He was mulling over such gloomy thoughts when he met Sergeant Disris for a cup of caf in the mess hall. She was aboard to give an in-person report on the state of Vader's prison, responsibility for which she continued to take upon herself. The rims around her eyes spoke of how heavily that responsibility sat and of the necessity of the caf.

"It's funny what you can get used to," she observed, with no particular prompting.

He looked askance at her.

"I have to get up every morning and remind myself who I'm guarding," she clarified, "otherwise it would just become routine. Complacency's the enemy and all that."

"Except when it's your enemy's complacency." Harvan stared into his cup. "But I understand what you mean."

"Did you ever start to get less afraid of him?"

He put his head on one side, frowning. "Not exactly. More . . . is it possible to feel sympathy for someone like that?"

"Probably. Sometimes . . . it's harder to forget he's on life-support some days."

Disris wrinkled her nose and drank a mouthful of caf. It was the mess' finest brew, so would likely have been improved by paralysis of the tongue. She put the cup down and clicked her neck. "He's perked up recently though."

The remark caught Harvan off-guard. "Ah . . . how so?"

"Just seems more alert somehow. Ever since the Imperial Guard paid a house-call, he's just been meditating most of the time. Barely moved for hours straight. Then recently . . . just became that bit more active. I figure it was about the time they got that red-eyed freak out of the fleet, so maybe he could just breathe easier after that. Or whatever."

"Hm." Harvan wrapped his hands around his drink, letting the warmth seep through his fingers.

"What're you thinking?"

That Vader had spoken of warping his son's emotions and perceptions so freely. That the question remained of how the Inquisitor's presence had affected the dark lord. How a being who could lay pressure on the minds of people across the fleet might do far worse than create an underlying sense of oppression.

"How did he react during the attack?" Harvan asked.

"Not really at all. Went into lock-down the moment we got boarded. Just sat there. Not that I blame him. I was pretty sure they were going to blow the whole ship. Still don't know why they didn't."

"From the little evidence we could recover, the Inquisitor insisted they see Vader face to face. Killed the Guard captain for trying to start a debate on the matter."

"That was stupid."

He shrugged, not inclined to argue the point. "It's strange though. Putting the pieces together . . . it almost seems as if the Inquisitor needed to see Vader to be sure he was actually there. Which is fairly odd since they were apparently able to track him down across stars know how many light-years."

"I'm just glad Skywalker and Calrissian showed up with reinforcements when they did. Apparently painting bucket-heads red makes them shoot better."

Harvan lifted his cup and cradled it. A cell could not contain a Jedi's powers. Who knew more about clouding minds than the apprentice of the Emperor? The Inquisitor had demanded to see their target with their own eyes, had wasted precious time fighting through corridors and hallways – and at that, Harvan's mind jumped back to Commander Skywalker's dramatic entrance to confront Kraver, the memory dropping into place jarringly alongside the recordings and images of scarlet-armoured troopers barrelling through _Fidelity_ in a standard search pattern. The Inquisitor could have sliced a path clean through the structure of the ship. But they hadn't.

They hadn't and all they had achieved during their stay within the fleet seemed to have been bad tempers and general unease.

And all the while, Darth Vader had been meditating.

Was that idea terrifying? Or reassuring? Or some weird, unsettling combination of the two? Would Harvan ever have the opportunity to confirm that suspicion? To discover whether, in that work on the aftermath of the battle, he had really been glimpsing fragments of a still ongoing conflict, of two masters of the Force locked in an unseen war?

Did he really want to know?

Which was a silly question. Of course he did. But in the meantime he remained, still adrift in that sea of supposition while the Force moved around him, unseen and unkowable. Reminding himself, like Disris, that the man they had locked up aboard _Fidelity_ , however broken, weakened and redeemed, was still Darth Vader.


	47. Chapter 47

" _Proceed to hanger bay two. Board shuttle X3-T. Bring no personal items. Await further instructions."_

The command cylinder's contents were brief and to the point. It activated in the middle of the day, just as Harvan was finishing his lunch. A lucky coincidence although not an unwelcome one. He had always travelled better on a full stomach.

X3-T turned out to be a standard civilian shuttle, the kind that buzzed between worlds from core to mid-rim. An unremarkable craft. Inconspicuous. On a hangar deck crammed with starfighters and customised freighters it stuck out like a ronto among gizka. But it would be quickly lost among the traffic of the wider galaxy. Which was presumably the entire point.

A shrill beeping from the command cylinder accompanied his first step aboard the ship. He glanced down to see a scanning beam moving up his body, bright enough that he had to close his eyes. Something made an affirmative sounding 'bing' noise in the bulkhead above him. Taking this as permission to continue, he entered the cabin.

A familiar voice whistled out a greeting from the pilot's seat. Ban-Mas waved one big, leathery hand, indicating the seats on the port side before returning to the preflight checks. Harvan followed the unspoken instruction and went to strap himself in, navigating around the stack of crates that occupied a large section of the deck-space. They were marked variously as machine parts and agricultural supplies. He contemplated asking what was really in them, but decided against it. At least for the moment.

"Is it going to be just the two of us?" he asked after closing the last buckle.

Ban-Mas hooted. No, there was one more passenger. And he was late.

"Ah."

For maybe four minutes, Harvan sat there listening to the click of switches on the control boards. Once a few indecipherable words barked from the communications panel. They clearly meant something to Ban-Mas because he responded without breaking his rhythm.

Clunking sounds echoed up from beneath them, presumably fuel lines retracting. Then the scanning beam started up again followed immediately by a pained exclamation. Harvan twisted his head to see a gangly duros caught in the middle of it, one hand pressed to the side of his head. (OOOwwww,) he repeated, stumbling a little as the beam released him. He crossed the cabin in a slightly drunken stagger, taking the seat opposite Harvan seemingly on automatic pilot. (Oooof.)

"Are you all right?" Harvan asked while Ban-Mas informed the deck control that they were _finally_ ready to depart.

(Who, me? Oh, you know. Wishing I'd gone for that last painkiller. Never play the hero when you're two days out of a bacta tank, you get me?)

Harvan nodded, uncommitted on the subject, while Ban-Mas sealed the hatch and powered up the repulsor lifts.

(Tork Vep,) the duros introduced himself as the shuttle eased up and forwards. He offered a hand, stretching across so that Harvan could just about return his grip.

"Harvan Sahtou."

(Nice to meet you, fellow. Guess we're here for the same thing, huh?) Tork pressed himself back into his seat, returning his hand to the side of his head. (Front row seats for the greatest show of the century. Going to be _great_.)

Even with a reasonably good understanding of the particular language and dialect Tork was speaking, Harvan was not sure how to take that last remark. It seemed to hang somewhere between sarcasm and sincerity, unable to decide which way to fall.

The faint buzz of the magnetic shield washed over them and then the shuttle was free of the flagship's atmosphere, spiralling out through the perimeter patrols. Ships whirled past the view ports, moving too fast to register properly as anything more than glimpses of colourful metal. Open space yawned before them, an unending expanse of void studded with points of hard radiation. The navigation computer booped excitedly. Ban-Mas gripped the activator levers.

And the universe disappeared into a funnel of warped non-light as hyperspace swallowed them whole.

(Wooo.) Tork batted his heels against the supports for his seat. (Always the rush. How long's this going to take, chum?) he asked Ban-Mas.

The pilot's answer was vague. They were going to perform a series of jumps, diverting their course around the galactic rim before locking on to the final course.

(Oh great. So we could be bopping between mass points for weeks. Yay us. Mother of moons, this is going to be duuuull. They could at least of let us bring some kind of distraction. What, am I going to blow up the courtroom with my riddle-flute?)

"I once heard of an Imperial assassin who killed three dissenting planetary leaders with a sitar primed to act as a sonic cannon," Harvan murmured, "And there was a bith band who smuggled data through a dozen checkpoints as grooves on their speakers."

(That right? Huh. Wish I'd thought of trying that now.) He stretched out his limbs as much as he could before fixing Harvan with a curious look. (You the kind of being who knows lots of interesting stories, then?)

"More like, I know the statistics for a lot of interesting stories."

(Ah, right. Got you. That why you got called up for this crazy road-trip?)

"I, ah, suppose so, yes." Harvan cleared his throat. "And you?"

The duros did not reply for a minute or so, choosing instead to stare through the viewport at the rushing whorl of hyperspace. His eyes twitched. (I suppose you'll hear about it at the thing anyhow.) He stretched his arms again. (I'm . . . I'm one of the people Vader . . . spared.)

Tork let his arms drop, his hands landing in his lap, and slumped forward in the restraints. (I'm one of the ones who got away because the great and powerful dark lord let me live.) A high, snuffling laugh slipped between his lips. (Guess that makes me rare enough that they want to see me in person.)

"Ah . . ."

The shuttle plunged on, the engine hum deafening in the silence that followed. For the next ten minutes, none of them said anything, just focused on flying the ship or stared unseeingly at their feet or the crates or bits of the wall.

(Most people . . . most people ask about that,) Tork pointed out after fidgetting in his seat for a while, (Want to know what happened, yeah?)

"I . . . I'm sorry. I rather assumed . . . that you, ah, wouldn't want to talk about that."

(No – I mean, yeah, but – everyone always asks. And I always tell them. Doesn't matter if it hurts. You get I wonder that you didn't ask, yeah?)

"I think . . . I've heard more than my share of stories about Vader. I . . . don't necessarily want to hear any more."

(Are you on the wrong shuttle.)

"True enough." Harvan twisted one of the clasps on his tunic one way then the other. "Do you want to tell me?"

Tork did not reply immediately. When he did, it was with an uncertain shrug. (I want to tell everyone. I want to shout that in the face of every Imperial scum-sack out there.) He grinned without any humour then let the expression slip from his face. (You mind if I tell you?)

"I . . . no. No of course not."

Pulling himself straighter, Tork splayed his fingers across his knees and closed his eyes. (Ten, twelve years ago. I was on a crew, running freight in the mid-rim. Best friends I ever had. We weren't rebels. Weren't even smugglers. Just running a freighter, trying to make a living. Kept our heads down, did as we were told. Because that was safe. All we wanted was to be safe. But one day we got pulled up by a star destroyer hunting down some fugitive. We'd got no idea what was going on. Thought it was a mistake. Just played along. Kept our heads down, did as we were told, let the stormtroopers board. Only _he_ was with them. And he wouldn't believe the woman he was after wasn't there. Just wouldn't. Lined us all up in front of Captain Teega and started killing us. One by one. Didn't make any demands until he'd sliced off Brankin's head. Said he would keep going unless Teega told him where this woman was. But Teega didn't know, you get it? Just couldn't tell him what he wanted. So he killed Vetch. And Tarin. And Kerith. And Voz. And Mall't. One by one. All while Teega was begging him to stop.) Tork's voice did not waver. This was obviously a list he was used to repeating. (And he'd just got to me when one of his troopers tells him the woman's starfighter was making a break for clear space. You see? She'd clamped on back among the cargo pods. Just held on while we undocked and left port. We'd known nothing about it, there was no air drain to suggest a stowaway. We were just unlucky. Vader still killed Teega. He was angry. Think because he'd wasted his time with us. Calling us traitors and criminals while his real target got away. I'm not really sure he even noticed I was still there when he left. I wasn't relevant any more so . . . I got to live.) There was a hitch as he said that, underlying emotion breaking through the rehearsed, endlessly repeated story. (Alone. On a powered down ship with just my friends' bodies for company.)

Ban-Mas twisted in his seat to look back and whistled his sympathy. Harvan said nothing, recognising all too well that there was nothing he could say. Tork rolled his shoulder, as if working out an ache. (There. That's my story. Why I joined the Alliance. Why I hate the Empire. I've told it so many times – you'd think it'd stop hurting after a while, yeah? Twelve years. Hasn't yet.) He gave another laugh, wavering and insincere. (Don't really want it to. Don't really want to stop being angry that my friends were killed for no good reason. Don't think I should.)

Ban-Mas' proboscis curled. Tork must be hoping the court would be sensible and have Vader shot, then. At least he had that possibility to look forward to, right?

(Shooting him? Putting him out of his misery?) The duros bobbed his head and Harvan heard a new viciousness in his voice. (Why would I want that?) He made a cutting gesture through the air in front of him, a sign of flat refusal. (I've got a pal on the medical frigate, told me what it's like in that armour, yeah? What he's going through every day? I don't want them to shoot him. Lock him up and seal him, whatever – I just want them to make sure he _lives_.)


	48. Chapter 48

They made three landings before arriving on the world where the trial was to take place. At the first two, they offloaded some of the crates, sending them out on hover-sleds in batches that would, Harvan estimated, each weigh about the same as himself and Tork. To all intents and purposes, they were just doing another supply run, albeit one that would given the wrong impression to any mass-sensors that someone might have planted on the hull. Between each set-down point, they made twice as many jumps as would have been necessary. All standard tactics for confusing pursuit or tracking. Ban-Mas would be performing several more landings and many more jumps after delivering his passengers.

The structure – it was not quite right to call it a fortress – was built into the side of a mountain. It stood atthe end of a narrow valley, rising in a series of great red-stone arches, the towering achievement of some ancient architect's equally towering genius. There was a sweeping organic element to the design, the sense that the builders had done their best to blur the line between the rock shaped by their hands and that shaped by the environment alone. It was hard to escape the idea that the whole thing had been grown, not constructed. Perhaps it had. The sight put Harvan in mind of some of the more esoteric cathedrals that dotted the older core worlds, their origins and design principles clouded by a thousand years of history.

Outwardly, it was a strange venue to have chosen.

To enter the landing bay, pilots were required to navigate through an increasingly narrow and twisting path, finally setting down in a vaulted chamber maybe twice as big again as the hangars on _Home-One_. In true Rebellion style, said chamber was already crammed with a dozen mismatched spacecraft and a mob of anxious technicians. Unusually however, those technicians were not busy tinkering with half-dismantled engines or third-hand shield arrays but were instead manning more scanning and security equipment than Harvan had ever seen in one place before. They swarmed over each ship and everyone exiting them, making no allowances for rank or dignity. The instant Harvan and Tork stepped out of the shuttle, they were dragged in opposite directions and made to stand under the glare of an astonishing variety of devices, many of which looked a hair's breadth from blasting them where they stood. Troopers milled around among the throng, ready to do likewise at the first sign of trouble.

At considerable length, and feeling as if he had just been mildly cooked, Harvan was allowed to escape the sensor beams. As a souvenir the experience, they locked a custom-fit tracking band around his wrist. It would tie him in to the systems installed throughout the complex and ensure that every move he made was tracked. A protocol droid wearing a lieutenant's insignia pointed him through to the next chamber in, from which he would be able to reach the quarters assigned to him, the communal areas and anywhere else his clearance permitted him access to. He thanked it and moved on, slowly making his way clear of the hangar and the bustle therein.

The great circular hall was much airier than any room sitting under tonnes of rock had any right to be. That was the first thing he noticed. The second was the immense concave mirror that made up most of the roof, bouncing back an upside-down, back-to-front image of everyone and everything there. The effect was disconcerting, not least because it doubled the apparent height of the place and sucked the viewer into focusing on that rather than what was actually in front of them.

Harvan dragged his eyes back down to the everyday level in time to avoid walking into the back of a quarren in full flowing robes who was busy having an animated debate with a bothan in an impeccably tailored suit. He managed to side-step around them and continued towards one of the doorways at the far end. The chamber was laid out in the style of an ornamental garden: stone paths crossing between areas of mossy lawn and short plinths holding bowls of glass-clear water. Perhaps it was the greenery that deadened the sounds that should by rights have been echoing from wall to wall. Dozens of people clustered in groups around the place, yet while the landing bay rang with noise, here there was only a monastic hush.

Princess Organa was standing by one of the plinths, deep in discussion with mikkian wearing the insignia of a first-rank arbitrix. General Solo stood behind them, one hand resting on his blaster, bored expression contradicted by the intensity with which he was watching their surroundings. As Harvan passed, the Princess glanced in his direction and he was surprised to see her give him the ghost of a tight smile and a nod of acknowledgement. He returned the nod and hurried on, trying not to be too aware of General Solo's eyes boring into his back.

A winding passageway, lit at intervals by beacons set into alcoves in the walls, took him up into what seemed to be more day-to-day living spaces. They were built to a more reassuring scale, giving them the sense of belonging to a species that was merely particularly tall, not gigantic. At some point, they been converted to a standard of habitation more at home in the last hundred years than deep antiquity. Bare stonework gave way to panelled rooms full of computer terminals or scattered with tables and chairs. Through one door, Harvan caught sight of an honest to goodness library and through another, a kind of banquet hall lined with expressive abstract statues. The more recent additions – mainly Alliance security and communication equipment – stuck out sorely against an overall impression of quiet stateliness.

The room assigned to him was slightly bigger than his cabin aboard _Home-One_. He suspected it had been little more than a monastic cell before whoever had undertaken the renovations got hold of it. As it stood though, it was comfortable and quiet, which was all he would ever ask for.

After several days stuck aboard the shuttle in the same tunic and trousers, he was very glad to have the chance to shower and change. A suit of clothes lay waiting for him on the bed, formal wear in the style of the leading culture on Bideran, fitted exactly to his measurements. A last biometric test? Or simply the desire to ensure that everyone presented the best possible appearance for the record? Either way, it was bizarre to be wearing something so neat and proper after so many years dressing in whatever cast-offs or second-hand uniforms the Alliance could get hold of. He felt like he was stepping into the shoes of some past version of himself.

They were on a planet called Tibus, the information terminal in the corner told him, in a structure generally known as the Seat of Mercy. Mercy in the sense of sanctuary according to the more accurate translation though the implications probably played a part in selecting the location. It had been built, as far as anyone could tell, as a refuge from the frequent meteor storms that swept this particular system. A cunning arrangement of exotic minerals woven into the structure of the great arches created a deflection field able to nudge incoming matter away from whatever settlements had once stood in their shadow. And should that fail, passageways cut into the earth under a mountain made for a perfectly serviceable bunker. From turbolasers as well as falling rocks. The deflection field would be unlikely to trouble a targeting computer for long in the event of an attack but the Rebellion survived and prospered on snatched seconds and brief advantages. With a proper shield generator installed above the Seat's highest reaches and tunnels leading underground to exits hundreds of kilometres away in all directions, the place became a stronghold equal to any Imperial task-force that might chance its luck. That was the hope anyway. That those defences and the out-of-the-way nature of the system would protect them all while they got on with . . .

Sentencing Vader? Deciding what to do with him? Trying to work out how they even began to handle the things the Empire and its servants had done?

How long had the prospect of victory seemed so distant as to be unachievable? Now here they were, face to face with the aftermath before the war was even remotely over, transitioning from the simple state where fighting the Empire was an end in itself to a new and uncertain existence in which they needed to work out what came next. Restoring the Republic sounded so definite when you were rallying those crushed beneath the Emperor's ambition yet it was going to require a monumental effort to actually reach that point, still more work to make it mean anything more than a return to the very conditions in which Palpatine's new order had gestated.

You could not give justice and fairness to people with battle-cruisers and proton torpedoes. It was going to take a great deal of talking and debate to get there. A great many compromises too, in all probability. The sharing of responsibility and effort, the willingness to listen to the needs of others, the commitment to act in the long term, not just the short.

Perhaps given all that, Vader's presence was not quite so awful for the Alliance after all. If nothing else, it gave the representatives of nearly thirty worlds a reason to sit down together and try to reach a consensus.

They were going to need the practice.


	49. Chapter 49

_A/N:_

 _\- Well this week has been hellish. Always avoid being in journal publishing the week before everyone breaks up for the holidays.  
\- The upshot of all this has been me being flat out exhausted most days and thus have not been able to get more than a few hundred words written a night, thus thoroughly knocking back my schedule. Again.  
\- Also this chapter was a pain in the neck. Trying to layer in the right levels of meaning and everything - not fun. Hopefully fun to read though.  
\- Only one more chapter to go. One that in theory should be easier. Which is what I thought about this one. So . . . yeah. But still! One more to go and then it's doooooone!_

* * *

The aspect of the Seat of Mercy that most surprised Harvan were the gardens. They were everywhere, on every level, lit by reflected sunlight bounced between a hundred mirrors or cradled in the curving walls, open to the air but sheltered from the elements. Some were like the atrium, mossy lawns and sculpted miniature landscapes. Others were thick with delicate flowers and ranging vines long since broken loose from their original boundaries. A little effort had clearly been made to tend some of them but most had been allowed to grow wild. Walking among the plants was a strangely sad experience. All that effort to shape them, to force them into regimented patterns, undone by the simple passage of time. Someone's life's work, wasted with no one left to properly care for it. There was something of that about the whole place, no matter how many renovations were in evidence.

Despite that, Harvan enjoyed being there, as much as he could focus on enjoying anything against all the background noise and stress. There was not a great deal else for him to do. No one among the delegations busily preparing for the coming proceedings showed much interest in his presence. A few preliminary introductions, little more. It was possible – though he suspected, unlikely – that would change once things really got under way. For now, he was just happy to be enjoying the peace and quiet out from the confines of a starship. It felt good to be able to stretch his legs whenever he wanted for once.

He looked forward to the day when he would not be required to live in pressurised metal containers drifting between worlds, constantly worried about encountering one of the great many warships floating about the galaxy crewed by people all to eager to end the journey mid-flight.

Stargazing was a much safer way to spend the time. There was one particular garden, high in the upper reaches of the Seat, that offered a truly beautiful view of the southern sky. The angle meant there was nothing to interrupt his line of sight and on a world long since abandoned by anyone capable of producing light pollution, the full depth of the galaxy shone through the atmosphere.

Restless in the cool air, Harvan picked his way along a path choked with weeds just to see where it would lead. Plants, ferns of some kind, brushed his arms and legs, whispering against the fabric of the suit. Thanks to a clear sky and a trio of bright moons there was more than enough light to navigate by. He thought the path had likely been laid out in an undulating spiral, going out to the rim of the garden and then coiling back into the centre. It was only when he reached that rim and on a whim strayed off the track that he realised the design was intended to guide the casual visitor away from the edge before they realised how quickly the carefully sculpted landscape collapsed back into comparatively bare mountainside. It would have been quite a neat effect in its heyday.

Safe in the knowledge that the wristband would alert him if he started to leave the security zone, Harvan vaulted the low, crumbling wall and planted his feet on the scrubby ground beyond.

"I knew someone was going to find me eventually," a voice said softly from by his left elbow, "but I'm kind of surprised it was you."

Harvan nearly jumped right back over the wall. Commander Skywalker was sitting cross-legged on a flat patch of ground at the foot of the wall, sheltered and hidden from anyone walking in the garden. His eyes were closed, his face turned towards the valley but Harvan was in no doubt that he was well aware who had just blundered into his meditations.

"Oh – I – I'm sorry, I –"

Skywalker lifted a hand from his knee, opening his eyes to smile up at Harvan. "It's fine. Really. Quite a view, isn't it?" He was wearing a kind of loose, open-cut white robe over his dark uniform and it stirred in the breeze blowing up from the valley, the ends fluttering like flags. "I thought being out here, it might be easier to centre myself," he explained, unprompted, "At least I would be able to get a little peace and quiet until someone remembered to check the security screens." His fingers went to the band on his wrist.

"I'm – I'm sorry for disturbing you –"

"No, it's fine. Really it is. I've mainly been staring at the inside of my eyelids for the past half hour so you're not actually disturbing anything. Please." Skywalker indicated the spot next to him. "Will you join me?"

Harvan sat down. The mountainside was chilly but not yet uncomfortably so. He pressed his fingers against the soil, enjoying for a second the sensation of the thin grass and dirt on his flesh. The Commander unfolded his legs and put his chin on his hands. The wind ruffled his hair and robe, making him look every millimetre the careworn hero weighed down by the concerns of the galaxy. You could have hung the image of him in a gallery with more or less that title.

"Would you like to talk about it?" What madness seized him to ask such a question, Harvan did not know. He would have taken the words back in an instant if he could. It was just the automatic thing to ask of someone who was obviously troubled and he said it without thinking, without consideration for who that someone was.

Commander Skywalker gave absolutely no indication that he considered the question inappropriate. Instead, he tilted his head back, looking up at the stars for a couple of seconds before briefly closing his eyes again and exhaling through his nose. "Everyone expects me to give a passionate defence of my father. To stand up in front of all those people from all those worlds and tell them they're wrong about him. And there is a part of me that wants to do that. Because he _is_ my father and he _has_ changed. I know he has. But knowing he's changed and defending what he did – they're two very different things. I can say he's changed. I can't excuse what he did before that."

"Is defending someone necessarily the same as excusing them?"

"No . . . no it isn't. But can I really stand there in front of people who have lost their friends, their families, their _worlds_ because of things my father did and tell them that he 'had his reasons'?"

"If it is true, isn't that, ah . . . isn't that is exactly what you have to do?"

The younger man was silent. A frown settled on his brow. At last, he said, "When I was a kid, I always imagined being out among the stars, flying starfighters and winning wars. I wanted to go to the Imperial academy, become a pilot, become part of something greater than a farm in the middle of a desert. I don't think I even really understood what the Empire _was_ back then. I just wanted to get out there and make my mark. Then I did. Not the way I'd imagined, not in anything like the way I wanted but I got to be a hero for the Rebel Alliance. I was helping win a war and I was the heir to a great Jedi knight and when I flew against the Death Star, I _knew_ that I was doing the right thing. Right at the end, I even had Ben Kenobi's voice in my ear, telling me what to do. I was so sure . . ." The frown faded from his expression, leaving only sadness. "If I had really opened up to the Force then, if I had been trained as a Jedi . . . I'm not sure I could have fired that shot. Not like that. Knowing I was doing it because of losing my aunt and uncle and Biggs and because of what the Empire had done to Leia . . . knowing how many lives I would be destroying in being a hero. Wars do not make one great. That's what my teacher told me, the one who actually taught me to be a Jedi. Almost the first thing he said to me. I think I understand what he meant now. Truly understand it. And I keep thinking back and wondering: is that how it started for my father? Thinking that wars _did_ make him great? Able to do anything, _allowed_ to do anything, to be the kind of hero I always imagined myself as. Is that how the dark side got hold of him?"

Harvan studied Skywalker, not entirely sure where this was going. "Have you talked to your father about that?"

"I have and I know it was more complicated than that but – but that's the point, really. I know destroying the Death Star was ultimately right. But that doesn't mean I can ignore how many families I tore apart. Or forget that I fired that shot for the wrong reasons, without really understanding what I was doing. I have to accept the consequences of what I did. And I have to do everything I can to make up for every life I've taken, to make sure I never take another life without appreciating what it means, to make the galaxy a better place so that it all counts for something."

Sudden understanding dawned in Harvan's mind the instant before Skywalker uttered his next sentence.

"And if I chose to take that path for myself, if I chose to believe that I can balance the scales somehow, how can I offer my father anything less?"

From somewhere far, far in the distance, a low animal cry rose into the night. It was echoed once and then again. A pack of some native creatures, hunting in the darkness. The noise punctuated Skywalker's words with eerie precision. Harvan pressed his lips together then said, "You don't, ah . . . you don't think that's a reason to make an impassioned plea for leniency?"  
"Heh. You'd think so. How do I . . . you remember what you told me, that my father was seen as so complicit in what the Emperor did that he would always been seen as a monster, even if they knew he had changed? I want to change that. I want more than anything for my father to be given the benefit of the doubt. But I can't demand that happens. I don't have that right." Concern and perhaps regret mixed on his face. "My father . . . tortured Leia. Tortured Han and Chewie. He had Han frozen in carbonite and handed over to Jabba the Hutt. He put Lando's city under Imperial control even after Lando had done everything he asked so that wouldn't happen. Heck, it was Vader's troops who blasted Threepio to bits! He hurt all of them, in ways that are still hurting them. I know exactly why they feel the way they do. I can't blame them and I don't think they're wrong. They can't just magically look past all that. Not for my sake. Certainly not for his. And they are the people closest to me. The ones who . . . trust me enough not to think I've gone completely mad. I hope, anyway. I could beg them. I could plead with them about how much Vader has changed, defend everything he did on the grounds that he was under the Dark Side's influence – but in the end Leia will still be right. My father made a choice. And as much as he has suffered for that, he made so many more suffer along with him. How can I look any of those people in the eye and tell them that they need to forgive him. Because that's what if feels like I'd be doing. Telling them they had to put all that pain aside because of what I want. I can't ask that of my friends. I definitely can't ask that of complete strangers."

"Asking the question is not, ah, it's not necessarily demanding a particular answer," Harvan pointed out, "You can describe the mitigating factors without trying to use them to excuse everything."

"Yes. I know. I know I can. It just feels like I'm trying to put a wind-break up in a sandstorm." Skywalker must have caught Harven's puzzled frown at that because he added, "It's a pointless thing to do and if you're trying, you're probably deluding yourself about the situation." He hunched forward, folding his hands and tapping his forefingers against his lips. "If I'm going to be any kind of Jedi, I have to set aside what I want and focus on doing the right thing regardless. But even if I can be objective, I won't be seen as being objective. At worst, anything I say will be disregarded as being biased because of my connection to Vader. Even if it isn't, how do I explain what I _feel_ as any sort of fact? How can anyone take my word when there's no one who can corroborate –"

He stopped, looking aghast. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start . . . I'm sorry. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say. But it's not fair to use you as some sort of sounding board for all this."

"It's fine. I, uh, did ask what was wrong. Although . . . ah, why did you tell me?"

Skywalker seemed surprised by the question. "Because . . . because my father's right. It's easy to talk to you."

Harvan blinked.

"You really listen. It makes it easier to say what I'm really thinking, I guess."

"Oh."

Rubbing grass between his finger and thumb, not quite sure what he was supposed to make of the complement, Harvan focused on a particularly bright star, low to the horizon, twinkling blue and white. Silence yawned between them. He knew the onus was on him to fill it yet his mouth refused to produce a single one of the questions buzzing in his mind. Glacially, he got his thoughts into a sensible order.

"What . . . what is it that you want? You said . . . giving your father a chance to . . . balance the scales . . . but what does that mean, exactly?" He reached for a half-remembered dialectic trick from long-ago school days. "What does it look like?"

Hesitating, Skywalker toyed with one of his cuffs, brushing the synth-flesh across the back of his right thumb. "My father, helping me understand what the old Jedi were like, helping me find and train new ones – helping us rebuild the things he helped the Emperor destroy. Helping us make them better this time. There will still be people born with a connection to the Force whatever happens. They'll need guidance and I'm nowhere near ready to do that alone. And the Empire's still out there. The Emperor had secrets even my father didn't know about but he can help us understand and anticipate them. He was probably the person closest to the Emperor for two decades – the one best placed to help us deal with whatever he left behind."

"That's . . . forgive me sir, but that, ah, seems like a great deal of help for a man on perpetual life-support to give."

"Yes . . . I know. I hope . . . I hoped that he might recover his strength, drawing on the Force without giving into the Dark Side."

"But . . . not now?"

"The Force isn't a cure-all. Using it to sustain yourself, using it to drive death back – that's running the risk of going to dark places. My father knows that more than anyone." Skywalker sighed, deeply and from the heart. "It sounds very naïve, doesn't it?"

"It sounds like a perfectly natural thing to wish for."

"It's not going to happen though. Even if it did . . . the Jedi were only part of what my father did. Would restoring them really bring peace to those he hurt? Would it be justice for all the lives he took? It's what I want. That doesn't make it right. I know that. I've accepted that."

"What about your father? What does he want?"

Again, the Jedi hesitated. Again, he sighed. "I think," he said in the tone of one who has spent a very long time pondering his answer, "he wants to be at peace." Another pause. "Some days it's hard not to think I robbed him of that by saving him."

The wind was starting to pick up now, sending moaning gusts through the Seat of Mercy's intricate architecture. Harvan hugged himself, as surreptitiously as he could. He considered making his excuses and leaving. Something held him back. The sense that there was more to be said. Or at the very least, more that Commander Skywalker wanted to say.

"How would you judge him?" Skywalker asked, quite abruptly, "You've listened to him, researched him, seen so many records. You've talked to me. Overheard me and Leia – you're probably got the closest thing to an objective view of all this. How would you judge my father?"

Being asked the question by Luke Skywalker, phrased in that way, was somehow easier to process than the same kind of question asked by Darth Vader. The terms of _this_ question were at least easier to protest. "Wh . . . sir . . . I'm _not_ objective. I'm a member of the Rebel Alliance. A traitor to the Empire. I'm not remotely objective, no matter how hard I might try to see all sides. To be objective . . . you'd need someone completely outside the situation. And even then, they'd be influenced by the set of experiences that shaped their lives. It would all colour how they saw this. I can't give you the, the truth. Just my interpretation of the facts. My opinion."

Skywalker was looking straight at him now, sharp and attentive. "Then tell me that."

Harvan matched his stare. "You've heard it before, m-more or less. Darth Vader was the enemy of everything I believe in. By the standards I would hold anyone to, he was a monster, responsible for hundreds of extra-judicial killings and out-right murders, even discounting the rumours and exaggerations. You talk of balancing the scales and accepting the consequences and I don't know if that is even possible but the first step, the most basic thing he can do is face his accusers. Face his _victims_. I don't know if this –" He tried to encompass the whole Seat of Mercy and the imminent proceedings with a single gesture. "– will be fair. I don't know if it will even result in a judgement or if everything will get deferred to when we have a working galactic judiciary again. But for the first time in twenty years, your father is going to be held to account. And that – that is _good_. That is what I've been fighting for. I want it to be fair. I want it to be just. I want his voice to be heard. But if – if you want me to pass judgement on him, then it's that he doesn't deserve to be the only voice that counts any more. Or ever again."

He looked down, unable to hold Skywalker's eye any longer. The sides of his neck prickled with heat and a muddle of conviction and embarrassment. He got up, drawing breath to make his apologies.

"Mr Sahtou . . . do you realise that doing that, facing all that anger and hatred and pain – confronting it – do you realise that could destroy him?" Skywalker's voice was a whisper, hovering on the edge of fearfulness.

Thinking back to what Vader had said about being able to feel the loathing of the Alliance soldiers around him, Harvan nodded. "Yes sir. I think . . . I think I understand what you mean." And he remembered the context Vader had given for that feeling. "I believe that your father knows it too."

Commander Skywalker sat very still. Just for a fraction of a second, he seemed to be channelling the same uncanny immobility Vader displayed. As though he were momentarily subtracting himself entirely from the normal hurly-burly of the universe. "He does."

The moment passed. Skywalker relaxed, warmth flooding back into his face and posture. "Thank you, Mr Sahtou."

"Ah . . . I'm not sure I . . ."

"No. I mean it. Thank you for letting me speak my mind and for speaking yours. I'm sorry I spoiled your walk."

"Oh, no, that's . . . ah . . . I hope you're able to . . . centre yourself."

Skywalker crossed his legs again. "You know . . . I think I'm getting there."


	50. Chapter 50

_A/N: You know, I'm not even going to apologise for taking so long to finish this. It was hellish and it is now 11 at night and this thing is 5000 words long._

 _. . ._

 _Also I might have played through Arkham Knight in one week, which took away from my writing ability._

 _. . ._

 _Sorry._

* * *

At the heart of the Seat of Mercy was a circular chamber vaster than any other. It was built as a kind of amphitheatre, with concentric rings of high arches separating stepped levels descending towards a flat open space some thirty metres across. Harvan was not quite sure if it counted as one room or a sequence of many and could scarcely imagine what its purpose had been. Given the Seat's original role, perhaps it had simply been somewhere to house thousands of people at short notice.

The Alliance engineering teams had, with their usual spectacular speed and efficiency, transformed that central space into a fully functional courtroom. Tiered benches ran around half of the circumference. The other half was given over to platforms for the presiding judges and their entourages, arranged in a complex pattern presumably derived from the equally complex relationships between the various peoples represented. A ring of screens hung overhead ready to display whatever information everyone would be required to see. At the very centre of the chamber was a podium, large enough to comfortably hold a single person.

From his seat, high at the back of the make-shift auditorium, Harvan watched people pour in. Taken as a crowd, they were a largely sombre one, beings from dozens of species in the formal wear of three times as many cultures filtering in from the outside in groups of ones and twos. There was little in the way of noise, just the soft susurration of the occasional murmured exchange and the patter of shoes and boots against stone and metal. The room as a whole was holding its breath. The hush was an expectant one.

He could see Princess Organa and General Solo standing together right down at the front, the General's freighter-captain clothes sticking out sharply even against the myriad of styles. The Princess' golden 3PO droid was just walking away from them, moving remarkably quickly for someone restricted to moving at a precisely modulated stroll. Harvan recalled a rumour that had gone around the fleet a few weeks ago about an attempt to recover data from the droid's memory banks – some piece of pre-Empire information long thought deleted that might be relevant again. He had not heard whether the effort had been successful, or if it had anything to do with Vader. Likely not, given the low odds that both droids employed by the Princess and her brother would have a connection to their father.

Solo and the Princess bent their heads together, presumably to talk quietly while people filled out the seats around them. They were near a section of the stands reserved for people who might be expected to give in-person testimony, which made sense. Any other details were lost to distance and Harvan let his attention wander away from them. It felt too much like intruding to keep watching.

The judges' platforms were starting to fill out now. While the court was physically set up in the ancient Selketh style, it would be run strictly according to Republic principles. This necessitated a certain amount of protocol and formality, particularly to ensure that all participants were appropriately sworn in. Slowly, that process was being completed and the various parties were taking their places. The platform in the middle, shared by Mon Calamari and quarren, was already nearly full. A group of dresselians in the brightly coloured garb of a half-dozen different states were making garrulous conversation as they climbed to the platform at the far end of the arc. Members of the Alderaani remnant filed on to the one at the near end in sombre silence.

Someone's elbow brushed against Harvan's shoulder. A short human woman in a belted tunic muttered an apology and settled down next to him. Almost at once, an ithorian came stomping along, trying to get to the spot on Harvan's other side. It took some considerable manoeuvring to get everyone into the right places and by then the benches were becoming crowded as more and more people found their seats. A soft rustle of voices rose and fell, dropping quickly back into the prevailing expectant hush.

Looking back towards the front, over the heads of the three bothans who had taken the seats on the next row down, Harvan saw six Alliance officers troop in, moving stiffly in uniforms several degrees more ornate than they were used to. He recognised a couple of them, the captains of a pair of blockade runners seized by the Empire during Vader's hunt for Commander Skywalker. Lieutenant Torbel still favoured her left leg when she walked.

A line of astromechs followed in their wake, splitting up and gliding off in various different directions. They warbled to one another, the sounds carrying clearly up to the heights of the arches. Perhaps realising that, they fell silent one after the other and settled into their allotted sections, interfacing with consoles around the platforms.

Harvan's eyes drifted back to where Princess Organa had been standing. She was seated now, looking at a datapad. General Solo was still beside her, arms firmly folded. It was too far away to make out his expression but his body language said everything. It was hard not to wonder how much it had taken to persuade him to attend. He was not exactly the kind of person you could have simply ordered to report for transport.

The more romantic observers might well have put it down to the woman sitting next to him, an assessment to which there was surely some truth. Given what Harvan knew about Solo's experiences during the war with the Empire, he suspected that it was also at least partly down to wanting to make certain things went ahead without problems. From what little Harvan knew about Solo from people who'd actually met him, he might simply have been there to make sure he'd be on hand to say 'I told you so' if said problems occurred.

A new figure was coming towards them across the courtroom, turning heads as he approached the Princess and the General. Comander Skywalker, not as distinctive at a distance as his sister or friend but recognisable by the dark uniform showing under his white robe. Seeing him walking rather than sitting, there was something in the cut of the robe that reminded Harvan of the Princess' clothes. A hint of Alderaani design. Was that intentional? Or simply coincidence or necessity? There were probably a finite number of ways to cut a robe that simple on the human frame. Still, an interesting signal to mix into all the other implications bound up in his being Vader's son, Princess Organa's brother, a hero of the Rebellion, and a Jedi on top of all the rest.

Skywalker reached his sister and stopped, not quite looking at her, awkwardness and uncertainty showing in his stance. Princess Organa lowered her datapad and must have said something because Skywalker ducked his head in response. Solo stirred in his seat but did not uncross his arms. After a few more words, the Princess reached out and took Skywalker's hand. He relaxed immediately, uncertainty transforming into gratitude and relief, and glanced at his friend. The General tilted his head in a way that suggested he was rolling his eyes, then waved briefly towards the seat on the other side of the Princess. Even from so far away, Harvan was sure he recognised Skywalker's almost-shy smile as the young man took his place.

A soft, penetrating chime rang through the courtroom and out through the many archways. This triggered a rush for the few remaining empty seats, one snivvian taking a flying leap for the third row up, coattails streaming out behind him. Recording droids swept overhead in a cloud of buzzing spheres, spreading out to create a watchful halo just below the display screen ring. The screens themselves brightened, stand-by images flickering into real-time views of the judges or the central podium. Guards stationed around the chamber came sharply to attention. The last few judges settled into place. Expectation became anticipation among the assembled audience, people leaning forward or muttering quickly to their neighbours. The chime sounded again.

Darth Vader was led in flanked by dozens of troopers in full battle-armour. Whether they were there to protect everyone from Vader or Vader from everyone else remained an open question. With the visors of their helmets covering their eyes, it was unclear how they felt about either. Glimpses of their chins suggested their faces were, to a being, set in stony grimaces.

They had shackled Vader's hands in front of him with a pair of high-security blinders, the type that could be electrified or magnetised as needed. A stipulation of the agreements that had brought the hearing together, though what anyone expected such a device to do in the event that Vader suddenly reclaimed both the power and temperament wielded at the height of his service to the Emperor, Harvan was not entirely sure. In all likelihood it was just the image of him in chains that was wanted, either with an eye on posterity or simply to provide some small measure of psychological reassurance.

A small measure swamped by the way Vader still towered over the tallest of the guards. Outwardly he was much the same as when Harvan had last seen him – the patches marring the scuffed black armour, the scars and burns on the helmet, the simple covering of the rough grey robe. There was evidence of an attempt to neaten up the larger areas of damage, to seal them properly against an environment that was not completely sterile. This restored some of the smooth blackness to the armour, restored a little to those gleaming Imperial lines. That, though, was mere window dressing. A few brush-strokes to complete the portrait.

Darth Vader, no longer slumped in a overly small chair, no longer confined in a room barely wider than a couple of his strides, was walking among the soldiers like a king. He held his head high and matched the guards' pace exactly without hesitation or any apparent difficulty. There was no swagger in the way he moved, no arrogance. But neither was there any sign of weakness. The chamber did not grow chill at his presence. But Harvan was sure that many people's blood ran cold at the sight.

For a brief, horrifying instant, Harvan was filled with the idea that Vader really had been shamming all along and with all the dreadful implications of that.

No. No, that was not it. A moment's thought dismissed the notion from his mind. This was not the return of the old Vader, not the Emperor's Fist restored to power. The helmet was too rigid in its poise. The lights on the chest panel flickered wildly, warning messages stuttering on the displays. Anyone who had spent time closely observing Vader would be able to tell how much effort it was taking for him to appear so composed, how much willpower he was having to exert to hide the cumulative effects of his injuries.

In ringing silence, they watched him being led from the entrance to the podium, the cameras tracking every step. His escort fanned out as he stepped on to the railed platform, moving away a couple of metres before coming to attention. Automatically, the shackles locked themselves on to to the guard rail, pinning themselves at a comfortable height. Another concession to those who, quite reasonably, doubted the sense of being in the same room with him if he was not restrained. The distinctive shimmer of a magnetic shield activation rippled up in a column around the podium. After a second or two, it settled into transparency and there he was: Darth Vader, standing tall and alone, scrutinised from every angle by everyone around him, the dark lord trapped as if under glass.

There was a moment, a couple of seconds at most, in which Vader's helmet turned, just slightly, towards the seats in which his son and daughter were sitting. Not enough to look at them. Not enough even really to have glimpsed them. Just enough that it was clear he was aware they were there. Was it Harvan's imagination that he stood straighter still after that?

The podium rose smoothly upwards by two metres, lifting Vader so that he could more easily face the judges. A third time, the chime rang out. The foremost judge, Salvabaric, rose to her feet. She was a Mon Calamari, old enough that her skin was starting to mottle and grey with age. For over five decades she had been one of the highest legal officiators among her people, garnering a reputation for staunch fairness – albeit not leniency – that persisted even in the face of the Imperial occupation of her world. Her support of the Alliance was tempered by her convictions about the rule of law and changing society through debate not violence. Those convictions created friction between her and those Alliance leaders more willing to countenance open aggression against the Empire. The rumour was that it had only been after the details of the Death Star became widely known that she had begun to view the Rebellion in any kind of positive light. Her appointment as chairperson and Mon Mothma's noticeable absence spoke of a serious attempt to enforce a degree of neutrality on the proceedings.

Salvabaric cleared her throat. "My honoured colleagues, sentients." Her amplified voice reached everyone in the chamber, its slightly raspy quality unable to disguise the raw authority booming in every word. "I stand before you with the gravest of responsibilities. It is my duty to open a hearing that will determine the fate of a being charged with crimes so calculated and malignant that they strike at the very foundations of civilisation. We stand here as representatives of worlds freed from the tyranny of an empire that condones acts of unspeakable barbarity, united by common bonds of decency that have placed forever in opposition to that most monstrous of institutions. It is in the spirit of those bonds and of civilisation itself that we submit this case not to the swift judgement of perceived righteousness triumphing in battle over presumed wickedness but to the calm consideration of open discussion between those who may not walk in step regarding the precise minutiae of law yet who are as one in a belief in justice for the low and the high alike.

"In what follows, we do not seek to address judgement of the entire spectrum of horrors perpetrated by the so-called 'New Order' and the Empire that it built. There will be much temptation to do so as we examine the evidence in all its gruesome detail and I must urge all of you to avoid conflating the whole with the part that is the subject of these proceedings. We are here to judge one man, not that system that enabled his crimes nor the abundance of collaborators and accomplices who share the blame for the Empire's atrocities. For those beings who formed the greater part of the Empire and the inner circles that controlled it, we hope that justice will come in time but it is not for us to pre-empt or by rushed generalisation mitigate that reckoning. We must focus solely on what is immediately before us: the life and actions of the person known most widely as Darth Vader."

The gaze of the court shifted back to Vader as she spoke, insofar as it had ever left him. He was, quite naturally, impassive. "It must be clearly stated for the record," Salvabaric continued solemnly, "that 'Darth Vader' is an assumed name for the man formerly known as Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi knight of the Republic. How his former existence, prior to the injuries that necessitated such a dramatic physical transformation, factors in to his subsequent actions is directly relevant to this hearing and given this, agreement to broadcast this information has been obtained from all parties on whom it could have an effect. Let it be noted that this includes the prisoner."

Harvan felt no surprise about that, though he wondered how exactly Vader had responded to the question. He would understand the implications for his children. For himself too, perhaps, although it seemed likely that would be the lesser concern. Harvan wondered if he had asked what his son and daughter wanted.

Salvabaric's address continued. She described the form the hearing would take. The balance struck between a dozen different legal systems and the varied groups of judges and jurors assembled around her. The precedents, such as they were, from history. The need to be scrupulous in their deliberations. "If we are to restore the ideals of the Republic and build a galaxy in which every world is equal, we must admit that an insistence on justice defines a responsibility to fairness. We are here to weigh all the factors before us and we shall follow where they lead, into whatever darkness they take us but also into whatever light. We must not dismiss evidence that does not fit with our preconceived notions of who it is that stands in the middle of this chamber. He is a being in a mask, indeed he is trapped behind that mask. There is necessarily part of him hidden from the casual observer. It is our responsibility to examine what is beyond that casual observer's gaze and not be misled by our worse instincts into wilfully ignoring whatever mitigating circumstances may exist."

Anger bubbled through the thick, tense atmosphere, anger at the very idea of giving Darth Vader the benefit of the slightest doubt. Harvan could see it in the way people sat, the way they shifted or stayed perfectly still, the twist of an expression, the twitch of a mouth. It was understandable. Yet he could see the other side of the blade Salvabaric was wielding. The careful positioning of the positive evidence on an equal footing with the negative – without once making a claim about which was the most numerous.

He watched the images of Vader's helmet as Salvabaric's speech built towards its conclusion. It was strange: had the mask lost its ability to scare him? Or were there simply so many new associations layered on it that the most terrifying ones became smothered? He still felt the old twisting in his stomach, but it existed alongside images of Vader struggling for breath more than ever as they fled from Kraver's men or staring morosely at images of his dead wife. A strange quirk of experience: Harvan no longer feared the Vader of the present, the being he was now, after the Emperor, after finding his son – or his son finding him. He was not going to unleash dark forces upon them all or single-handedly tear the Alliance apart from within. That drive to destroy all that opposed him . . . it seemed simply to have evaporated. Lost in Palpatine's funeral pyre, in the fireball that had consumed the Death Star forever. However terrifying the powers Vader still wielded and whatever their true extent, the will to use those powers was gone.

No. Harvan was not afraid of the mask. But that did not take away from what it represented.

 _How would you judge him?_ That was the question Skywalker had asked him. He knew he had avoided doing so in quite the way the Jedi had intended. Just as he had refused to respond to Vader's question – which was more or less the same one. Despite the soundness of his reasons, evading the same question twice sat awkwardly on his conscience. It echoed still in the confines of his head. _How would_ you _judge him?_

Harvan closed his eyes. Disjointed images from a dozen massacres flocked up from his memory, death tolls flickering past, one after the other. He had dissected those figures, picked them apart to allocate responsibility as far as possible at such a distance. So many names reduced to numbers. Worlds burned for disobedience. Police action against refugees and the dispossessed. Summary executions justified by tyrannical laws. Failure treated as a capital crime. Erratic brutality. Tactical cunning interspersed with instances of boundless rage. Violence committed for a cause Vader scarcely seemed ever to have believed in, in the name of an Emperor to whom he felt little loyalty.

The Empire was necessary. That was the reason Vader had given for turning on the Republic, on the Jedi, on his friends. Necessary to enforce order. Strong enough to protect what Vader – Anakin – believed worth protecting. He was far from the first to have gone to war in the name of peace. That had been a lie of course, as it often was, told by a man who engineered crisis after crisis, scandal after scandal in an endless pursuit of more power. A lie that followed to its ultimate extension meant bringing worlds to order by blowing them to rubble. And Vader had followed it to that end, burning up everything that he had wanted to protect, destroying everything that made his life worth living. Because it was necessary.

All he had been left with was a burning, empty hatred and the teachings of the man who had betrayed him, driving him to survive at any cost. And the power to lash out at anyone the Emperor did not actively care about, with only the fear of what the Emperor would do to him if he visibly stepped out of line to hold him in check. A life lived in agony and in inflicting agony on others. Malice as a religion.

Put up against that was – what? The very fact of that initial manipulation. The intoxicating effects of the 'dark side' of the Force. Vader's ultimate betrayal of the Emperor, saving his son and likely cutting the Empire's lifespan in half with one blow. Total compliance in the aftermath. How many lives would now be saved because Vader had shared his secrets?

There was no way to tell in advance. No way to see if the numbers balanced. And even if they did, could lives be balanced like that? Where was the equivalence in one person saved while another remained dead? Harvan thought about Supervisor Yisa, her neck snapped for minor errors, the consequences of which would have been negligable if the Empire had not earned the violent resentment of entire cultures. Captain Needa, throttled because he had the temerity to try and apologise for making a mistake in the heat of battle. Major Kraver's squad, butchered without remorse. Tork's crew, slaughtered without hesitation. He thought about the House of Kelom, the ruling family of Shu-torun and all the others killed to make a point. Phoenix Squadron, the Plasma Devils, a hundred other rebel cells, squashed without heed to whoever else got caught in the crossfire.

All those thousands, all those casualties of Vader's anger – no matter what happened, they were never coming back.

Vader was not the ultimate cause of many of those deaths. Likely the Emperor would have found another way if he had not been able to command his Fist to strike down his enemies. But Vader was responsible. For every demonstration of power, for every slash of a lightsaber, for every carelessly deflected blaster bolt. He, the man who at the height of his powers could slaughter armies single-handedly, who had remained impassive as Alderaan burned, he was responsible for every death that had occurred at his hands.

When Harvan had first joined the Rebellion, he had known that it would likely mean having to take lives. That was a logical consequence of partaking in an armed insurrection. It was not a decision of which he was at all proud. And despite shooting to injure whenever possible, despite working through sleepless nights to find ways around Imperial security that would remove even the chance of a fire-fight, he _had_ killed. He was directly responsible for the deaths of exactly eleven sentient beings. All during pitched battles, all when the only choice was to fire back or be killed – for all that that was any justification. He had waived the right to judge others for taking lives in war. But the sheer number of Vader's victims went far beyond any sane definition of 'war'. For Vader, the war was endless and without boundaries. There was no atrocity he would not commit, no line he would not cross. Enemies lurked everywhere, mistakes were betrayals, nothing in the entire galaxy could be trusted if it did not bend exactly to the demands of his will. Commander Skywalker had suggested that he had wanted to be a great warrior. Well, he had become the greatest. None could ever have hoped to match him.

Before Luke Skywalker.

Vader had changed. His obsession with his son had given him a purpose beyond being the Emperor's instrument and, eventually, a way out of the mire of anger and misery he had created for himself. Was it truly love, unearthed from deep within the armoured shell, or simply a desperate need to reclaim some piece of a lost past? Harvan was still not sure. Functionally it made little difference. Vader turned on the Emperor, an act of self-sacrifice that brought him to the brink of death and forever diminished the power to which he had clung for so long. And ever since . . .

 _It is what Luke would have done._ The simple explanation for using his remaining abilities in defence of others and attempting to shield his jailers from being caught up in the vengeance that pursued him. An explanation too for defending the fleet from metaphysical attack. It was what his son would have done. So Vader did it and in doing so . . . maybe he would become the person Luke hoped he could be. Because whatever else he was, whatever he had done, Vader cared deeply about his children. He would give his life for them. In some ways, he already had.

Harvan opened his eyes. The mask loomed overhead on the screens, grim, imposing, the face of a thousand nightmares. Powerful. Unbroken. A lie. The man inside the mask was dying. He had been dying for years. Sooner rather than later, those flickering lights would go out and the respirator would hiss for the last time. Maybe that would be a relief. In all their interviews, they had never really talked about what it was like to live inside the armour but Harvan had enough outside sources to have built up an idea of how much Vader suffered. It was not a great reach to imagine that a surrender to death would be preferable to the burden of persisting in the husk of what he had once been.

As the opening speech ended and Salvabaric gave up the stand for a quarren herald, Harvan thought about Corporal Jenz' spluttering protests to being ordered to protect Vader. He thought about Kaitis' anger at the very idea of leaving him alive, about Orrimaarko's single-minded thirst for retribution, Toman Veturvia's unashamed fear, Lando Calrissian's unabashed glee at seeing Vader caged, Chewbacca's studied indifference. He thought about Leia Organa's determined refusal to forgive or forget.

Those points of view and all those that mirrored them throughout the Alliance, across known space – they were not invalidated by the changes Vader had undergone. Far from it. The past was not undone by the present. It was not balanced by it. But neither did Vader's crimes mean that his change of mind – his reclamation of the light, however you wished to describe it – did not matter. Luke Skywalker wanted to see the best in his father. That was probably the only reason they were both still alive. He _believed_ Vader had changed, based on Jedi insight and gut instinct. From the outside, gazing through the spectres of the dead, it stank of naivety and wishful thinking. Yet Harvan could not reject the idea. The progression was real, the change non-trivial – Anakin Skywalker who had become Darth Vader had become someone different again. Someone who could feel regret. Someone who could feel guilt. Someone who strove in whatever limited ways were open to him to be worth his son's efforts to save him.

As the herald began to read out the list of indictments, Harvan knew without a shadow of a doubt that Vader would admit his guilt to every single one of them. He would stand before the representatives of the peoples he had wronged, in a room full of beings who hated him and everything he had embodied, and he would do precisely what he had done in all those long hours with no one but Harvan and a holo-recorder as witnesses. No attempt to hide. No effort to dissemble. No desire to be excused.

Harvan looked down at him. Not the death's head image, glowering forever in the recordings that would be beamed across the galaxy but at the man. A single dark figure in simple robes, standing straight-backed and tall yet somehow becoming lost among his surroundings. The world had inverted around him. He was no longer striding above everyone else, the dark lord before whom all others trembled. At long last, Vader was the one facing judgement and it diminished him, robbing him of the scale he had enjoyed during his time at the Emperor's command. For all that they were only there because of him, he was no longer the only thing in the room that mattered.

The herald's voice continued evenly from one atrocity to the next and Harvan listened to the figures he knew by heart and looked up again at the image of the mask. It really was impossible to see the man behind it. And that was the truth of it. Vader had changed, was striving to be someone better, was struggling to shed the darkness – but the past would always be there. The mark he had left in history. Whoever the person behind the mask became, the mask would remain.

The galaxy had survived Darth Vader. It would out-last him, it would recover from him. But he would never recover from what he had done to the galaxy. Any good he did, any good he had ever done, would forever be eclipsed by the extent of the harm. The final consequence of that _necessary_ choice.

 _How would you judge him?_

Simply that he had earned every bloody word the history books would record about him.

And Vader knew that.

And his choice now, maybe the last choice he would ever make, was to face it head on.

Because of sincere regret? Because it was the right thing to do? Or simply because it was what Luke would have done?

With some sadness, Harvan realised he would probably never be able to ask.

* * *

 _The End._

 _Really, yes it is. I won't say this is how it was always going to end. There was a vague notion of some sort of epic mirroring sunset shot. Possibly even on Tatooine. But that would have been a bit hard to convey without a John Williams soundtrack and the poor man is probably still improvising twiddly bits over the end credits of The Force Awakens somewhere (seriously, they just never end!) so I didn't want to bother him. Thus, back-up option: the thematic ending rather than the ending theme._

 _Thank you for taking the time to read this monster._

 _And only when it's over does it hit me that I never once described what Harvan Sahtou looks like. Such is life._


End file.
